The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn has cracked open a door that many thought was firmly shut: plaintiffs can now seek RICO damages for business and property losses that stem from personal injury. By a narrow 5–4 margin, the Court resolved a longstanding circuit split and clarified that civil RICO isn’t barred just because the economic harm traces back to a personal injury event.
This isn’t just a technical shift. It meaningfully expands the tools available to plaintiffs, especially in industries like pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and consumer products—areas where economic losses often stack up behind personal injury claims. But this isn’t a wholesale reinvention of RICO, nor does it turn every personal injury case into a federal racketeering suit.
The decision leaves in place critical statutory constraints that will continue to shape which claims survive and which collapse early. For law firms, insurers, and corporate defendants, Horn signals a recalibration—not a revolution—in the civil RICO landscape. And smart litigators on both sides are already adjusting their strategies to match.
Understanding the Ruling: What Exactly Changed?
The core legal question in Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn was deceptively simple: can a plaintiff recover under civil RICO for economic losses if those losses stem from a personal injury? For years, the federal circuits were split on whether the statute’s language implicitly barred claims when the underlying harm began with a personal injury.
Douglas Horn’s case brought this tension to the surface. A commercial truck driver, Horn used a CBD product marketed as THC-free. He later tested positive for THC, lost his job, and sued the manufacturer under RICO, arguing that the company’s false advertising constituted a pattern of racketeering activity—specifically, mail and wire fraud—that directly caused him economic harm.
The district court shut him down, holding that because RICO excludes personal injury claims, it also bars recovery for any economic loss flowing from a personal injury—a view shared by the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits, but rejected by the Second and Ninth.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, grounded the opinion in the ordinary meaning of the statutory text. The Court focused on the type of harm covered—not its origin. If a plaintiff’s business or property is harmed, the fact that the harm traces back to a personal injury event does not knock the claim out of RICO. The Court’s analogy was direct: a gas station owner who is assaulted during a robbery can’t recover under RICO for pain and suffering, but if the resulting injuries force the business to close, the owner can seek recovery for the economic loss.
The majority rejected the argument that “injury” should be read as a narrow legal term of art tied to tort law’s exclusion of personal injury–related damages. Instead, it read “injury” in its everyday sense—harm or damage. In doing so, the Court closed the door on the categorical bar embraced by the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits, which had long held that any economic losses derived from personal injuries were out of bounds under RICO.
The ruling aligned the law nationwide with the broader interpretations of the Second and Ninth Circuits, which had refused to wall off business or property losses simply because a personal injury came first. This is no small shift. It clarifies that RICO’s civil remedy provision applies to the nature of the harm claimed—not the type of event that caused it. Plaintiffs can now bring federal racketeering claims even when the causal chain starts with a personal injury, as long as the harm alleged is to business or property.
Still, the Court was careful to carve out the limits of its own ruling. Barrett’s opinion explicitly left several critical questions unresolved, which lower courts will now have to sort through.
The justices did not decide whether Horn’s lost job actually qualified as an “injury to business,” leaving open the debate over whether individual employment counts as “business” for civil remedies. They also steered clear of defining the outer boundaries of what counts as “property” injury—declining to say, for example, whether lost wages or medical expenses tied to a personal injury automatically fit.
Transforming the Litigation Landscape
The Horn decision sharpens the tools available to plaintiffs’ lawyers, and the industries most likely to feel the first wave of pressure are predictable: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and consumer products. These sectors already face a constant drumbeat of litigation tied to personal injuries.
Now, plaintiffs’ firms can frame economic losses flowing from those injuries—lost income, damaged business opportunities, or property harm—as a basis for civil RICO claims. That opens the door to bigger stakes, broader discovery, and heavier settlement leverage.
Civil RICO is no ordinary claim. Its power comes from two core features: treble damages and reputational weight, a combination that can transform even moderate disputes into existential risks.
A standard tort or contract dispute may be expensive, but a RICO suit carries the threat of tripled financial exposure and the near-automatic stigma of being accused of racketeering. Even the whisper of a viable RICO case can send insurers scrambling, corporate boards panicking, and defense lawyers reevaluating litigation strategy.
The Supreme Court’s ruling means that cases previously confined to state tort claims may now be dressed in federal racketeering language—raising costs, stakes, and attention overnight. But plaintiffs still face sharp statutory hurdles that will continue to weed out weak claims.
First, the direct causation requirement remains a central gatekeeper. The Supreme Court underscored RICO claims demand a clear, immediate connection between the alleged racketeering acts and the economic harm. Foreseeability or attenuated causal chains won’t cut it.
In practical terms, this means plaintiffs can’t simply say, “You injured me, so every dollar I lost counts under RICO.” They must show that the racketeering conduct directly damaged their business or property in a way that clears the proximate cause standard.
Second, the pattern requirement stands firm. RICO demands more than a one-off bad act; it requires at least two predicate acts forming a related and continuous pattern of racketeering activity.
A single misstatement about a product or an isolated incident won’t meet the mark. Plaintiffs’ lawyers will need to assemble evidence showing sustained misconduct that fits RICO’s framework, not just wrap a routine product liability case in racketeering language.
Third, the scope of “business” and “property” is narrower than plaintiffs might hope. The Court explicitly left open whether every employment loss counts as a business injury or whether every economic loss tied to a personal injury, such as medical bills, counts as property harm under RICO. Defense lawyers will challenge these interpretations aggressively, pushing courts to adopt tight, statutory readings that block attempts to shoehorn ordinary damages into the RICO box.
The Structural Tension
Civil RICO was built as a weapon against organized crime—a tool to dismantle mafia networks, extortion rackets, and corrupt enterprises. But over time, its scope has stretched far beyond that original mission. What started as an anti-crime statute now routinely captures commercial disputes, business harms, and, after Horn, economic losses linked to personal injury.
This drift didn’t happen overnight. Step by step, the courts expanded civil RICO’s boundaries, first by loosening the “pattern” requirement, then broadening the meaning of “enterprise,” and now clearing the way for certain injury-linked economic claims.
The Supreme Court has consistently acknowledged this tension but has drawn a clear line: it’s not the judiciary’s job to narrow RICO. In Horn, as in earlier decisions, the majority pointed to Congress as the proper venue for reform. The Court’s message is blunt—if policymakers believe civil RICO has become too broad, they have the power to rewrite it.
Congress has stepped in before. The 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act cut back RICO’s reach in securities fraud, responding to concerns that the statute was distorting corporate and investor lawsuits. But a broader overhaul of civil RICO has never materialized, and in today’s fractured political climate, there’s little reason to expect one.
That leaves the system in the hands of creative plaintiffs, aggressive defense teams, and incremental case law—a dynamic that has shaped civil RICO’s steady expansion for decades. Horn is not a radical break. It’s another push in a long drift away from civil RICO’s original focus. Unless and until Congress intervenes, the statute’s boundaries will keep stretching, one decision at a time.
A Legal Shift Worth Watching
The Supreme Court’s decision in Horn opens new doors for civil RICO claims—but it doesn’t blow the litigation doors off the hinges. For firms on both sides, the message is clear: adapt thoughtfully, not reactively. Plaintiffs’ lawyers should weigh cases carefully, focusing on claims that meet RICO’s demanding elements. Defense counsel should sharpen their early motion strategies and recalibrate how they assess settlement risks when a RICO claim is on the table.
Horn doesn’t change the game. It changes the terrain. Smart firms will map it quickly—and move accordingly. Clients and industries depending on them will be watching closely.