Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2024 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., ET AL. v. HORN

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE SECOND CIRCUIT

No. 23–365. Argued October 15, 2024—Decided April 2, 2025

Seeking relief from his accident-related chronic pain, Douglas Horn pur-

chased and began taking “Dixie X,” a purportedly THC-free, non-psy-

choactive CBD tincture produced by Medical Marijuana, Inc. A few

weeks later, however, Horn’s employer selected him for random drug

screening, and Horn tested positive for THC. After he refused to par-

ticipate in a substance abuse program, his employer fired him. Horn

then sued Medical Marijuana under the Racketeer Influenced and Cor-

rupt Organizations Act (RICO), which creates a cause of action for

“[a]ny person injured in his business or property” by reason of a crim-

inal RICO violation. 18 U. S. C. §1964(c). The District Court granted

summary judgment to Medical Marijuana. Horn’s lost employment

derived from a personal injury (ingesting THC), the court reasoned.

And in the court’s view, §1964(c) forecloses recovery not only for per-

sonal injuries, but also for business or property harms that result from

such injuries. The Second Circuit reversed, concluding that Horn had

been “injured in his business” when he lost his job. In so holding, the

Second Circuit rejected the “antecedent-personal-injury bar,” a rule

adopted by several circuits that precludes recovery for business or

property losses that derive from a personal injury.

Held: Under civil RICO, §1964(c), a plaintiff may seek treble damages

for business or property loss even if the loss resulted from a personal

injury. Pp. 4–19.

(a) The sole question before the Court is whether civil RICO categor-

ically bars recovery for business or property losses that derive from a

personal injury. The Court does not address issues implicated by this

case but outside the scope of the question presented, i.e., whether Horn

suffered a personal injury when he consumed THC, whether the term

2 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Syllabus

“business” encompasses all aspects of “employment,” and what “in-

jured in his . . . property” means for purposes of §1964(c). Pp. 4–5.

(b) Section 1964(c) provides that “[a]ny person injured in his busi-

ness or property by reason of a violation of [RICO] may sue . . . .” The

ordinary meaning of “injure” is to “cause harm or damage to” or to

“hurt.” American Heritage Dictionary 676. So the meaning of §1964(c)

is straightforward: A plaintiff has been “injured in his business or

property” if his business or property has been harmed or damaged.

Even so, §1964(c) does not allow recovery for all harms. By explicitly

permitting recovery for harms to business and property, §1964(c) im-

plicitly excludes recovery for harm to one’s person. But the business

or property requirement operates with respect to the kinds of harm for

which the plaintiff can recover, not the cause of the harm for which he

seeks relief. For example, a gas station owner beaten in a robbery

cannot recover for his pain and suffering. But if injuries from the rob-

bery force him to shut his doors, he can recover for the loss of his busi-

ness. A plaintiff can seek damages for business or property loss, in

other words, regardless of whether the loss resulted from a personal

injury. Pp. 5–6.

(c) Medical Marijuana argues that while “injury” ordinarily means

harm, it can also refer to the “invasion of a legal right.” Ballentine’s

Law Dictionary 627. Seizing on the latter definition, Medical Mariju-

ana asserts that “injured in his business or property” means “suffered

an invasion of a business or property right”—i.e., a business or prop-

erty tort. And Medical Marijuana contends that the invasion of a per-

sonal right never gives rise to a RICO claim. So if a personal-injury

tort causes a business or property harm, the plaintiff “cannot recast”

his harm “as the basis for a RICO suit.”

Medical Marijuana in effect tries to make a term-of-art argument

without the term of art. True, “injury” can mean the “invasion of a

legal right,” but even legal dictionaries confirm that “injury” often

means “harm” or “damage.” In any event, when a word carries both

an ordinary and specialized meaning, context determines the choice

between them. Here, context favors ordinary meaning. The statute

uses “injured,” not “injury,” and the dictionary Medical Marijuana re-

lies on defines “injured” only according to its ordinary meaning. And

Medical Marijuana’s argument based on the presence of the word

“damages” in §1964(c) is untenable. The phrase “threefold the dam-

ages he sustains” refers to monetary redress—i.e., a plaintiff may re-

cover triple the amount that makes him whole. Pp. 6–9.

(d) Medical Marijuana ignores the many cases in which the Court

has used the words “injury,” “harm,” and other terms connoting loss

interchangeably. See, e.g., Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U. S.

479, 497 (“[T]he compensable injury necessarily is the harm caused by

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 3

Syllabus

predicate acts sufficiently related to constitute a pattern”); Anza v.

Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 547 U. S. 451, 457; Hemi Group, LLC v. City

of New York, 559 U. S. 1, 12. Medical Marijuana’s tort-centric defini-

tion of “injured” also stands in significant tension with the Court’s

holding in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin, 599 U. S. 533. In Yegiazaryan the

Court addressed the circumstances in which injuries to property qual-

ify as “domestic” and thus provide a basis for recovery under §1964(c).

Yegiazaryan urged the Court to rely on common-law principles gov-

erning “ ‘the situs’ ” of economic and property injuries. Id., at 546–547.

After questioning whether such common-law principles were even

“germane” to §1964(c), the Court rejected their application and instead

adopted a contextual inquiry. Id., at 544. In other words, the Court

rejected an appeal to rely on the common law, deeming that approach

inconsistent with “the thrust of §1964(c).” Id., at 548. The Court

reaches the same conclusion here. Pp. 9–11.

(e) While Medical Marijuana insists that the Court’s antitrust prec-

edent settles the question, its reliance on antitrust law is misplaced.

For one, antitrust law does not require plaintiffs to allege business or

property injuries that track common-law torts. And for another, the

Court has long recognized that the Clayton Act’s and §1964(c)’s injury

requirements are not “interchangeable.” RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. Euro-

pean Community, 579 U. S. 325, 352. Pp. 11–13.

(f) Medical Marijuana offers little guidance about how courts should

assess whether a plaintiff has suffered a qualifying legal injury. In

fact, the conclusions Medical Marijuana draws from its own hypothet-

icals rely on pure ipse dixit. It admits, for example, that draining a

bank account using a computer password obtained by violence injures

the account holder’s property; it concedes that §1964(c) allows recovery

for a ransom payment despite the antecedent kidnapping; and it in-

sists that a human-trafficking victim can sue for her business or prop-

erty harm despite it resulting from her captivity. But if an antecedent-

personal-injury bar exists, it is unclear why any of these plaintiffs can

recover for their losses.

Defining “injured” by reference to legal rights also raises questions

about defining the right at issue. Medical Marijuana’s proposed solu-

tion—that courts should consult the complaint, state law, and general

tort principles—does not work. Taking those sources in order, the par-

ties’ disagreement over whether Horn pleaded a personal injury ex-

poses the problems with looking to the plaintiff’s complaint. Relying

on state law would create choice-of-law questions. And looking to gen-

eral tort law poses problems of its own. Not only does general tort law

not always clearly distinguish between “business,” “personal,” and

“property” torts, but it also is difficult to apply when there is no clear

analogue or majority rule. Pp. 13–17.

4 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Syllabus

(g) Medical Marijuana warns that the Second Circuit’s rule will evis-

cerate RICO’s “business or property” limitation, allowing plaintiffs to

transform personal-injury claims into RICO suits for treble damages.

But Medical Marijuana understates the other constraints on civil

RICO claims. Even so, civil RICO has no doubt evolved “into some-

thing quite different from the original conception of its enactors,”

Sedima, 473 U. S., at 500, and Medical Marijuana is not the first to

express concern about the over-federalization of state-law claims. As

the Court has said before, if the statute allows the undue proliferation

of RICO suits, the “correction must lie with Congress.” Id., at 499.

Pp. 17–18.

80 F. 4th 130, affirmed and remanded.

BARRETT, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which SOTOMAYOR,

KAGAN, GORSUCH, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. JACKSON, J., filed a concur-

ring opinion. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. KAVANAUGH, J., filed

a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and ALITO, J., joined.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 1

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of

Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,

pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 23–365

_________________

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v.

DOUGLAS J. HORN

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

[April 2, 2025]

JUSTICE BARRETT delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act

(RICO) creates a cause of action for “[a]ny person injured in

his business or property.” 18 U. S. C. §1964(c). We must

decide whether the statute, by implicitly denying a remedy

for personal injuries, also denies a remedy for business and

property loss that derives from a personal injury. It does

not.

I

A

In 2012, Douglas Horn was working as a commercial

truck driver when he crashed his truck and injured his back

and shoulder. Months later, he was still suffering from

chronic pain, and neither physical therapy nor traditional

medicine provided relief. While searching for a natural al-

ternative, Horn came across “Dixie X,” a tincture infused

with cannabidiol—more commonly known as CBD—sold by

Medical Marijuana, Inc.1 CBD, like its cannabis “cousin”

——————

1 Red Dice Holdings, LLC, is a joint venture of Medical Marijuana, Inc.,

and Dixie Holdings, LLC. All three petitioners—defendants in the courts

below—played a role in producing and selling Dixie X. The details of

2 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is a naturally occurring

chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. Only

THC, however, has the mind-altering properties associated

with marijuana.2

Because a positive drug test could cost him his job, Horn

was wary of any product that might contain THC. But

Dixie X seemed safe. It was described as a “CBD-rich,” non-

psychoactive medicine that is “0% THC.” App. 19. Medical

Marijuana’s online FAQ page promised that Dixie X was

“legal to consume both here in the U.S. and in many coun-

tries abroad.” Id., at 40. Additional research, including a

call to a customer-service representative, reinforced those

representations. Satisfied that Dixie X was THC-free, Horn

bought a bottle and gave it a try.

A few weeks later, Horn’s employer selected him for a

random drug screening. To his surprise, the test detected

THC in his system. After Horn refused to complete a sub-

stance-abuse program—in his view, doing so would consti-

tute “an admission to doing drugs,” id., at 91–92—his em-

ployer fired him. Horn then ordered another bottle of Dixie

X and sent it to a third-party lab for testing. This test also

came back positive for THC. In fact, the lab refused to mail

the sample back to him, fearing that doing so would violate

federal law.

Horn sued Medical Marijuana in Federal District Court,

raising a civil RICO claim (as well as a host of state-law

claims not relevant here). See 18 U. S. C. §1964(c). He al-

leged that Medical Marijuana was a RICO “ ‘enterprise’ ” en-

gaged in marketing, distributing, and selling Dixie X.

§1961(4); see United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S. 576, 583

(1981) (a RICO enterprise is “a group of persons associated

——————

their respective roles do not matter here, so we refer to them collectively

as “Medical Marijuana.”

2 See Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,

Cannabidiol (CBD)—Potential Harms, Side Effects, and Unknowns 1

(Feb. 2023).

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 3

Opinion of the Court

together for a common purpose of engaging in a course of

conduct”). He also asserted that Medical Marijuana’s false

or misleading advertising satisfied the elements of mail and

wire fraud and that those crimes constituted a “ ‘pattern of

racketeering activity.’ ” §§1961(1), (5); see also §§1341,

1343.

The District Court granted summary judgment to Medi-

cal Marijuana on the RICO claim. According to the court,

Horn’s lost employment “flow[ed] from, and [was] deriva-

tive of, a personal injury he suffered”—the introduction of

THC “into his system through the ingestion of Dixie X.”

2021 WL 4173195, *2, *5 (WDNY, Sept. 14, 2021). Yet

RICO’s civil cause of action, the court stressed, is available

only to a “ ‘person injured in his business or property.’ ” Id.,

at *2 (emphasis added). Because a plaintiff cannot recover

for a personal injury, it reasoned, neither can he recover for

a business or property harm that results from a personal

injury. Id., at *5. So for Horn, §1964(c) offered no path to

relief.

The Second Circuit reversed. 80 F. 4th 130 (2023). It

began by analyzing an issue that neither the District Court

nor the parties had addressed: whether the term “business”

in §1964(c) encompasses not only a “ ‘commercial or indus-

trial establishment or enterprise,’ ” but also an individual’s

“ ‘employment.’ ” Id., at 135–136. Adopting the broad defi-

nition, the Second Circuit concluded that Horn had been

“ ‘injured in his business’ ” when he lost his job. Ibid.

It then turned to the District Court’s holding that a plain-

tiff like Horn cannot recover for a business or property

harm that flows from an “antecedent personal injury.” Id.,

at 137. Horn insisted that any personal-injury bar was in-

applicable because the court had mischaracterized his “un-

witting ingestion of THC” as a “personal injury” from which

his lost employment derived. Id., at 135, n. 2. But the Sec-

ond Circuit put this issue aside, instead holding that

§1964(c) does not impose an “antecedent-personal-injury

4 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

bar.” Id., at 137. It acknowledged that by granting recovery

to someone “injured in his business or property,” §1964(c)

“implicitly excludes recovery for personal injuries.” Ibid.

Even so, the court said, nothing in “RICO’s text or struc-

ture” justifies reading this “negative implication” to exclude

recovery for all business and property injuries that happen

to derive from a personal injury. Id., at 138. Rather, Con-

gress “expressly authorized” a plaintiff to sue for injuries to

his business or property. Id., at 140. And “business and

property are no less injured simply because” the plaintiff

also suffered “an antecedent personal injury.” Id., at 140–

141.

By rejecting an antecedent-personal-injury bar, the Sec-

ond Circuit deepened a split among the circuits. The Sixth,

Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits have each interpreted

§1964(c) to preclude relief for any economic loss (including

loss to business or property) that results from a personal

injury. See Jackson v. Sedgwick Claims Mgmt. Servs., Inc.,

731 F. 3d 556, 565 (CA6 2013) (en banc); Doe v. Roe, 958 F.

2d 763, 770 (CA7 1992); Grogan v. Platt, 835 F. 2d 844, 847

(CA11 1988). The Second Circuit has joined the Ninth Cir-

cuit in refusing to distinguish between a business or prop-

erty loss suffered as an immediate consequence of a RICO

violation and one “derived from” or “a secondary effect of ”

a personal injury. Diaz v. Gates, 420 F. 3d 897, 901 (2005)

(en banc). We granted certiorari to resolve the split. 601

U. S. ___ (2024).

B

Because this case implicates several issues that fall out-

side the scope of the question presented, we begin by em-

phasizing what we do not decide.

First, we express no view on whether Horn suffered an

antecedent personal injury when he consumed THC. In the

courts below, Horn characterized his injury as exclusively

to his business and property because the defendants hurt

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 5

Opinion of the Court

his livelihood, not his body. Whatever the merits of this

theory, the Second Circuit did not address it, and neither

party asks us to revisit the District Court’s conclusion that

Horn suffered a personal injury. So like the Second Circuit,

we proceed on the understanding that he did.

Second, we do not decide whether the Second Circuit cor-

rectly interpreted “business” to encompass “employment”

for purposes of §1964(c). This interpretation may or may

not be right. But because Medical Marijuana has not chal-

lenged it, we leave the issue for another day.

Finally, we do not opine on what it means for a plaintiff

to be “injured in his . . . property” under §1964(c). The par-

ties suggest that this phrase covers all pecuniary loss. We

need not engage this argument, however, because Horn’s

claim does not depend on it. After concluding that Horn

was “injured in business,” the Second Circuit expressly re-

served the question “whether Horn suffered an injury to

property when he lost his job.” 80 F. 4th, at 136, n. 3. We

follow suit.

The only question we address is the one squarely before

us: whether civil RICO bars recovery for all business or

property harms that derive from a personal injury.

II

A

Section 1964(c) provides that “[a]ny person injured in his

business or property by reason of a violation of [RICO] may

sue. . . .” (Emphasis added.) The ordinary meaning of “in-

jure” is to “cause harm or damage to” or to “hurt.” American

Heritage Dictionary 676 (1969); Webster’s Third New Inter-

national Dictionary 1164 (1971) (“to impair the soundness

of ”; “to inflict material damage or loss on”); Ballentine’s

Law Dictionary 626 (3d ed. 1969) (“[t]o harm; to hurt; to

wound”). “Injury,” which shares a common root, ordinarily

refers to “[d]amage of or to a person, property, reputation,

or thing.” American Heritage Dictionary, at 676; see also

6 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, at 1164.3

The meaning of the relevant phrase is therefore straight-

forward: A plaintiff has been “injured in his business or

property” if his business or property has been harmed or

damaged. Section 1964(c) requires nothing more.

Even so, §1964(c) does not allow recovery for all harms.

Instead, by explicitly permitting recovery for harms to busi-

ness and property, it implicitly excludes recovery for harm

to one’s person. See RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Com-

munity, 579 U. S. 325, 350 (2016); see also A. Scalia & B.

Garner, Reading Law §10, p. 107 (2012) (“[S]pecification of

the one implies exclusion of the other”). But the “business

or property” requirement operates with respect to the kinds

of harm for which the plaintiff can recover, not the cause of

the harm for which he seeks relief. For example, if the

owner of a gas station is beaten in a robbery, he cannot re-

cover for his pain and suffering. But if his injuries force

him to shut his doors, he can recover for the loss of his busi-

ness. In short, a plaintiff can seek damages for business or

property loss regardless of whether the loss resulted from a

personal injury.

B

Medical Marijuana resists this conclusion, contending

that “injured in his business or property” carries a special-

ized meaning. While “injury” ordinarily means harm, it can

also refer to the “invasion of a legal right.” Ballentine’s Law

Dictionary, at 627; see also Restatement (Second) of Torts

§7(1) (1964). Seizing on the latter definition, Medical Ma-

——————

3 Section 1964(c), which was enacted in 1970, see 84 Stat. 944, was

modeled on a materially identical provision in the Clayton Act, which

was enacted in 1914, see 38 Stat. 731. Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-

Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U. S. 143, 150 (1987). “Injure” had the same

meaning then. See Webster’s New International Dictionary 1111 (1913)

(defining “injure” as “[t]o do harm to; to hurt; damage; impair” and “in-

jury” as “[d]amage or hurt done to or suffered by a person or thing”).

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 7

Opinion of the Court

rijuana, echoed by the principal dissent, argues that “in-

jured in his business or property” means “suffered an inva-

sion of a business or property right”—that is, a business or

property tort.4 The invasion of a personal right, they assert,

never gives rise to a cause of action under RICO. See Brief

for Petitioners 11, 15, 35; post, at 7 (opinion of KAVANAUGH,

J.). So if a personal-injury tort causes a business or prop-

erty harm, the plaintiff “cannot recast” his harm “as the ba-

sis for a RICO suit.” Brief for Petitioners 15.

It is true that “injury” can mean “invasion of a legal

right.” But even in the language of lawyers, this specialized

definition is not exclusive. Ballentine’s, for example, de-

fines the full phrase “injury in his property” to mean either

“[a]n injury to his property” or “[h]arm or damage resulting

to his property directly or indirectly.” Ballentine’s Law Dic-

tionary, at 627. And Black’s defines “injury” to mean “[a]ny

wrong or damage done to another, either in his person,

rights, reputation, or property.” Black’s Law Dictionary

924 (rev. 4th ed. 1968) (emphasis added). So in legal dic-

tionaries, as in lay ones, “injury” often means “harm” or

“damage.”

When a word carries both an ordinary and specialized

meaning, we look to context to choose between them.

United States v. Hansen, 599 U. S. 762, 775 (2023). Here,

context cuts decisively in favor of ordinary meaning. As an

——————

4 Neither Medical Marijuana nor the principal dissent explains why

the common law of torts supplies the entire universe of relevant rights.

After all, §1964(c) also confers a legal right: a protection against business

or property harms that result from racketeering activity. Accordingly, if

a defendant’s racketeering activity causes such a harm, the defendant

has “inva[ded]” the plaintiff ’s “legally protected interest”—in other

words, has injured the plaintiff, according to Medical Marijuana and the

principal dissent’s own definition. Restatement (Second) of Torts §7(1);

see post, at 1, 5 (KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting). Under their view, then, a

civil RICO plaintiff must establish not just one but two injuries: first, a

violation of the statutory right established by §1964(c), and second, a vi-

olation of a right recognized by the common law of torts.

8 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

initial matter, the statute uses the word “injured” rather

than “injury.” The word choice is notable, because while the

legal dictionary on which Medical Marijuana primarily re-

lies includes the specialized meaning (“invasion of a legal

right”) in the possible definitions of “injury,” it defines “in-

jured” only according to its ordinary meaning: “[h]urt, dam-

aged, [or] wounded.” Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, at 627.

It is hard to make a term-of-art argument without the term

of art.

And although Medical Marijuana argues otherwise, the

presence of the word “damages” does not suggest that “in-

jured” conveys a specialized meaning. Recall that §1964(c)

allows “[a]ny person injured in his business or property by

reason of ” a RICO violation to “recover threefold the dam-

ages he sustains.” (Emphasis added.) Medical Marijuana

insists that the definitions of “injured” and “damages” must

be different, because “Congress’ use of ‘certain language in

one part of the statute and different language in another’

can indicate that ‘different meanings were intended.’ ”

Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 568 U. S. 145,

156 (2013) (quoting Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U. S. 692,

711, n. 9 (2004)). According to Medical Marijuana, “dam-

age[s]” refers to the “loss, hurt or harm” resulting from the

RICO violation. Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, at 303. So

“injured” must mean something else—namely, “having suf-

fered an invasion of a legal right.” See Brief for Petitioners

15.

Once again, Medical Marijuana edits the statute to make

its point. Much as it treats “injured” as interchangeable

with “injury,” it treats “damages” as interchangeable with

“damage.” Yet the distinction matters, because “damages”

has a specialized legal meaning referring to monetary re-

dress. See Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, at 303; American

Stevedores, Inc. v. Porello, 330 U. S. 446, 450, n. 6 (1947).

Section 1964(c) is best read as using “damages” in precisely

this way. By allowing a plaintiff to recover “threefold the

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 9

Opinion of the Court

damages he sustains,” the statute allows a plaintiff to re-

cover triple the amount that makes him whole. §1964(c).

And if “damages” refers to “monetary redress,” it obviously

means something different from “hurt or harmed.” Giving

“injured” its ordinary meaning, therefore, is perfectly con-

sistent with the meaningful-variation canon. Besides, Med-

ical Marijuana’s preferred definition of “damages” is unten-

able. Under it, the statute would allow a plaintiff to recover

“threefold the loss, hurt, or harm he sustains.” That makes

little sense.

C

1

Medical Marijuana admits that “depending on context,

injury can mean harm” and that “injury, harm, and dam-

ages” can be used interchangeably. Reply Brief 8. Tell-

ingly, it ignores the many cases treating the terms synony-

mously in this very context.

Sedima holds that “the compensable injury necessarily is

the harm caused by predicate acts sufficiently related to

constitute a pattern.” Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473

U. S. 479, 497 (1985) (emphasis added). Tracking Sedima,

Anza is replete with language about the plaintiff ’s harms.

See, e.g., Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 547 U. S. 451,

457 (2006) (“Ideal’s theory is that Joseph and Vincent Anza

harmed it”); id., at 458 (“To be sure, Ideal asserts it suffered

its own harms”); ibid. (“The cause of Ideal’s asserted harms,

however, is a set of actions . . . entirely distinct from the

alleged RICO violation”). The same is true of Hemi Group,

which reiterates that “in the RICO context, the focus is on

the directness of the relationship between the conduct and

the harm.” Hemi Group, LLC v. City of New York, 559 U. S.

1, 12 (2010) (emphasis added). In case after case, we have

used the words “injury,” “harm,” and other terms connoting

loss interchangeably. See, e.g., Bridge v. Phoenix Bond &

Indemnity Co., 553 U. S. 639, 644, n. 3 (2008) (“For present

10 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

purposes, it suffices that respondents allege they ‘suffered

the loss of property related to the liens they would have

been able to acquire’ ”);5 Klehr v. A. O. Smith Corp., 521

U. S. 179, 191 (1997) (“[T]heir injuries—the harm to their

farm—have always been specific and calculable”); Holmes

v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U. S. 258,

271 (1992) (equating “injuries” with “losses suffered”). Ac-

cepting Medical Marijuana’s argument would require an

about-face.

Vocabulary aside, if “injured” does not mean “harmed,” it

is difficult to understand our holding in Yegiazaryan v.

Smagin. 599 U. S. 533 (2023). There, we addressed the

circumstances in which injuries to property qualify as “do-

mestic” and thus provide a basis for recovery under

§1964(c). Yegiazaryan urged us to rely on “common-law

principles governing ‘the situs’ ” of economic and property

injuries. Id., at 546–547. In his view, these principles es-

tablished a “bright-line rule”: An injury is located at the

plaintiff ’s domicile. Ibid. We rejected his argument, rea-

soning that he had not clearly explained why those princi-

ples were “germane” to §1964(c). Id., at 547. His view, we

observed, “generate[d] results . . . far afield from any rea-

sonable interpretation of what qualifies as a domestic ap-

plication of §1964(c).” Id., at 548. We instead adopted a

contextual, fact-intensive inquiry that accounts for “the na-

ture of the alleged injury, the racketeering activity that di-

rectly caused it, and the injurious aims and effects of that

activity.” Id., at 544 (footnote omitted).

——————

5 The principal dissent thinks that Bridge supports its view, but the

opposite is true. See post, at 19 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). In Bridge,

we rejected an invitation to look to a common-law tort analogue to resolve

whether the defendant’s fraudulent conduct could form the basis of a civil

RICO suit. 553 U. S., at 652. There was no reason to think, we ex-

plained, that Congress had limited §1964(c)’s reach to only “ ‘those acts

[that] would have been actionable under the common law.’ ” Ibid. In this

case, however, Medical Marijuana and the principal dissent adopt pre-

cisely that logic.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 11

Opinion of the Court

Medical Marijuana’s argument stands in significant ten-

sion with Yegiazaryan. Carried to its logical conclusion, a

tort-centric reading of §1964(c) would require that courts

refer to choice-of-law principles governing the “place of

wrong” when locating the situs of a RICO injury. Restate-

ment of Conflict of Laws §377 (1934). Those principles dic-

tate looking to where “the last event necessary to make an

actor liable for an alleged tort takes place.” Ibid. So there

would be no reason for a court to use a contextual approach,

surveying the “injurious effects” of the defendant’s conduct

and pinpointing where they “largely manifested.”

Yegiazaryan, 599 U. S., at 546. But this is the precise ap-

proach we outlined in Yegiazaryan. And we rejected the

petitioner’s appeal to the common law, deeming it incon-

sistent with “the thrust of §1964(c).” Id., at 548. We reach

the same conclusion here.

2

Perhaps realizing that our civil RICO precedent is not on

their side, Medical Marijuana and the principal dissent

largely ignore it, insisting instead that our antitrust prece-

dent settles the issue. See post, at 8–11 (opinion of

KAVANAUGH, J.). But their reliance on antitrust law is mis-

placed.6

Despite what the principal dissent says, antitrust law has

not “long required plaintiffs to allege business or property

injuries” that track common-law torts.7 See post, at 5–6, 10.

——————

6 As the principal dissent itself observes: “Few antitrust violations are

likely to inflict personal injury” because “anticompetitive acts break

laws, not legs.” Post, at 13 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). Well put—and

all the more reason to wonder why antitrust law is particularly helpful

here.

7 Tellingly, the principal dissent builds its antitrust argument on a sin-

gle sentence from a century-old case about rate fixing, see Keogh v. Chi-

cago & Northwestern R. Co., 260 U. S. 156, 162 (1922), and an unadorned

citation to a District Court case, see Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S.

330, 339 (1979) (citing Hamman v. United States, 267 F. Supp. 420, 432

12 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

In Radiant Burners, for example, we said that “to state a

claim” under the Sherman and Clayton Acts, “allegations

adequate to show a violation and, in a private treble dam-

age action, that [the] plaintiff was damaged thereby are all

the law requires.” Radiant Burners, Inc. v. Peoples Gas

Light & Coke Co., 364 U. S. 656, 660 (1961) (per curiam)

(emphasis added). And more recently, we observed that the

“broad text” of the Clayton Act—“ ‘any person’ who has been

‘injured’ ”—“readily covers consumers who purchase goods

or services at higher-than-competitive prices from an alleg-

edly monopolistic retailer.” Apple Inc. v. Pepper, 587 U. S.

273, 279 (2019). In neither Radiant Burners nor Apple (nor

any case in between) did we pause to ask whether “the

plaintiff ’s business or property rights” had been “legally vi-

olated” according to the common law of torts. Post, at 10

(KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting).8

In fact, to the extent our modern antitrust precedent fore-

closes recovery for certain economic harms, it does so be-

cause of a requirement that we have expressly declined to

extend to civil RICO. Several decades ago, we interpreted

the Clayton Act to require a particular kind of injury—

namely, an “injury of the type the antitrust laws were in-

tended to prevent.” Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-

Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 489 (1977); Atlantic Richfield Co.

——————

(Mont. 1967)). Post, at 8–10 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). And while the

dissent claims that we have recognized the former as “ ‘settled law,’ ” post,

at 9, n. 1, the “settled” rule of Keogh is that “tariff-related claims” do “not

give rise to treble-damages antitrust actions,” Square D Co. v. Niagara

Frontier Tariff Bureau, Inc., 476 U. S. 409, 419–420 (1986). Horn’s case,

of course, has nothing to do with tariffs.

8 Consistent with these cases, the prominent Areeda and Hovenkamp

treatise states that the Clayton Act’s “ ‘business or property’ requirement

is virtually always satisfied provided there is some kind of injury that

can be properly characterized as economic.” 2A P. Areeda, H.

Hovenkamp, R. Blair, & C. Durrance, Antitrust Law: An Analysis of An-

titrust Principles and Their Application §336 (5th ed. 2021).

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 13

Opinion of the Court

v. USA Petroleum Co., 495 U. S. 328, 342 (1990) (This “re-

quirement . . . ensures that the harm claimed by the plain-

tiff corresponds to the rationale for finding a violation of the

antitrust laws in the first place” (emphasis added)). In

Sedima, however, we concluded that “transplant[ing]” this

cause-of-action-specific interpretation of “injured” into the

RICO context “would be inappropriate.” RJR Nabisco, 579

U. S., at 352 (describing Sedima). Rejecting the Second Cir-

cuit’s “[a]nalog[y] to the Clayton Act,” we held that a civil

RICO plaintiff need not allege a “ ‘racketeering’ ” or “ ‘RICO-

type injury’ ”; all that is required is business or property

“harm” resulting from the defendant’s “predicate acts.”

Sedima, 473 U. S., at 484–485, 495. “There is no room in

the statutory language” we explained, “for an additional,

amorphous ‘racketeering injury’ requirement.” Id., at 495;

see also Holmes, 503 U. S., at 269, n. 15 (“ ‘[A]ntitrust in-

jury’ has no analogue in the RICO setting”). In short, we

recognized then and reiterate today that the Clayton Act

and §1964(c) are not “interchangeable.” RJR Nabisco, 579

U. S., at 352.

D

You can’t replace something with nothing. And aside

from its repeated assertions that “injury” means “invasion

of a legal right,” Medical Marijuana offers next to nothing

about how courts should assess whether the plaintiff has

suffered such an invasion.

The proof lies in Medical Marijuana’s own hypotheticals.

Unable to identify a guiding principle, it lets pure intuition

do the work. It asserts that if a mobster assaults a carwash

owner and the owner does “business with the mob” as a re-

sult, the owner has suffered a “business or property injury.”

Brief for Petitioners 34. But why? The business or property

loss flowed from an assault on the carwash owner. Accord-

ing to Medical Marijuana, the example works because

“[f]orcing someone to do business with the mob instead of a

14 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

cheaper, legitimate competitor is a prototypical business or

property injury.” Ibid. It offers nothing, however, to sup-

port this ipse dixit. What makes choosing a more expensive

business partner a “prototypical” business injury? And why

does this rationale not extend to losing your job, as Horn

did after consuming Dixie X? Medical Marijuana does not

say. 9

Its other examples continue in the same vein. It admits

that “if Tony Soprano drains a bank account using a com-

puter password obtained by violence, Mr. Soprano has in-

jured the account holder’s property by taking his money.”

Id., at 34–35 (citation omitted). It concedes that §1964(c)

allows recovery for a ransom payment, even if a kidnap-

ping—a personal harm—was the catalyst. Id., at 34. And

it insists that a human-trafficking victim can sue for her

business or property harm, even though the harm neces-

sarily resulted from her captivity. Reply Brief 8. But if an

antecedent-personal-injury bar exists, it is unclear why any

of these plaintiffs can recover for their business or property

losses. In each scenario, the economic harm resulted from

a personal injury.

As Medical Marijuana’s own hypotheticals reveal, defin-

ing “injured” by reference to legal rights raises difficult

questions about how to define the right at issue. And Med-

ical Marijuana’s proposed solution is illusory.10 Its reply

——————

9 The principal dissent has the same problem. It asserts that “negli-

gently driving a car into a pedestrian” inflicts a personal injury that it

calls “wrongful invasion of the pedestrian’s physical safety.” Post, at 7

(opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). But not even a cover-to-cover reading of the

Restatement will reveal a “wrongful invasion of physical safety” tort.

(And wisely, the dissent does not rest on the general tort of negligence,

which is not susceptible to fixed categorization as a business, property,

or personal tort.)

10 As is the principal dissent’s. It offers the half-hearted reassurance

that ascertaining “whether a plaintiff [has] plausibly allege[d] a business

or property injury as distinct from a personal injury . . . is at least a fa-

miliar judicial exercise.” Post, at 20 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). Suffice

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 15

Opinion of the Court

brief simply asserts that “plaintiffs are the masters of their

complaints and what legal rights they assert.” Id., at 4. But

how should a court determine whether the plaintiff has as-

serted a qualifying “legal right?” When asked this question

at oral argument, Medical Marijuana suggested that courts

could consult three sources: the complaint, state law, and

general tort principles. Tr. of Oral Arg. 35. Yet this list

gives rise to a host of new questions. Must a court examine

all three sources? In what order? What should it be looking

for? And what if the sources conflict?

Start with the complaint in this very case. The parties

vigorously dispute whether Horn pleaded a personal injury.

Medical Marijuana says yes, Horn says no, and the Second

Circuit declined to address the question. See 80 F. 4th, at

135, n. 2. We express no view on which party is right, but

their disagreement exposes the gaps in Medical Mariju-

ana’s theory. Do the plaintiff ’s asserted causes of action

govern? Or must a court try to match the alleged facts with

a particular business or property tort? And what if no par-

ticular tort squarely governs the facts of the case? As Horn

notes, “harboring” undocumented immigrants and “ ‘traf-

ficking in counterfeit labels for phonorecords’ ” are just two

of many RICO predicate offenses that lack obvious tort-law

analogues. See Brief for Respondent 26; see also 18 U. S. C.

§1961(1); 8 U. S. C. §1324 (harboring); 18 U. S. C. §2318

(trafficking).

Next, consider state law. In its briefing, Medical Mariju-

ana posits that “[i]ngesting an unwanted product” is

“plainly a personal injury,” citing two state-court opinions

as primary support. Brief for Petitioners 21 (citing Com-

monwealth v. Stratton, 114 Mass. 303, 304–305 (1873);

Gupta v. Asha Enterprises, L.L.C., 422 N. J. Super. 136,

142, 153–154, 27 A. 3d 953, 956, 963 (App. Div. 2011)). But

if state law controls, other questions arise. States need not

——————

it to say, we have our doubts.

16 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

define their torts using the specific categories of “business,”

“person,” and “property.” Nor do all torts obviously fall into

a particular category. Some States, for example, have re-

cently recognized a tort action against medical providers

who disclose “information obtained during treatment.” See

Lawson v. Halpern-Reiss, 2019 VT 38, ¶14, 210 Vt. 224,

233, 212 A. 3d 1213, 1219; Byrne v. Avery Center for Obstet-

rics & Gynecology, P.C., 327 Conn. 540, 564–568, 175 A. 3d

1, 15–17 (2018). Does disclosure implicate a privacy inter-

est? If so, does violating that interest constitute a “personal

injury”? Or does disclosure implicate a property interest in

one’s medical information?

Relying on state law would also create choice-of-law ques-

tions. Many RICO enterprises transcend the boundaries of

a single jurisdiction. See 18 U. S. C. §1965(a) (establishing

venue in “any district” in which the defendant “resides, is

found, has an agent, or transacts his affairs”); see also

Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483

U. S. 143, 154 (1987) (“[P]redicate acts will often occur in

several States”). Which jurisdiction must supply the neces-

sary tort-law analogue? Is it where the plaintiff felt her in-

jury? Where the defendant engaged in the racketeering ac-

tivity? Where the majority of the enterprise resides?

The third source on Medical Marijuana’s list—general

tort law—avoids the choice-of-law concern but has theoret-

ical problems of its own. For one, like state tort law, general

tort law does not always clearly distinguish between “busi-

ness,” “personal,” and “property” torts. For another, gen-

eral tort law is neither static nor uniform. See Air & Liquid

Systems Corp. v. DeVries, 586 U. S. 446, 453 (2019) (observ-

ing that “the federal and state courts ha[d] not reached con-

sensus on how to apply” a particular principle of general

tort law). When a majority rule does not exist, when the

law is unsettled, or when there is no analogous tort, defer-

ring to general tort principles is difficult, to say the least.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 17

Opinion of the Court

* * *

Medical Marijuana tries valiantly to engineer a rule that

yields its preferred outcomes. (Civil RICO should permit

suit against Tony Soprano, but not against an ordinary tort-

feasor.) But its textual hook—the word “injured”—does not

give it enough to go on. When all is said and done, Medical

Marijuana is left fighting the most natural interpretation

of the text—that “injured” means “harmed”—with no plau-

sible alternative in hand. That is a battle it cannot win.

III

Medical Marijuana, together with the principal dissent,

warn that the Second Circuit’s rule will eviscerate RICO’s

“business or property” limitation. See post, at 12 (opinion

of KAVANAUGH, J.). In their view, a plaintiff can character-

ize any economic harm flowing from a personal injury as a

harm to his business or property. Hence, they say, plain-

tiffs can easily transform garden-variety personal-injury

claims into RICO suits for treble damages. While we un-

derstand the concern, Medical Marijuana and the dissent

understate other constraints on civil RICO claims.

First and foremost is RICO’s direct-relationship require-

ment. Time and again, we have reiterated that §1964(c)’s

“by reason of ” language demands “some direct relation be-

tween the injury asserted and the injurious conduct al-

leged.” Holmes, 503 U. S., at 268. The key word is “direct”;

foreseeability does not cut it. Hemi Group, 559 U. S., at 12.

Rather, whenever the plaintiff ’s theory of causation re-

quires moving “well beyond the first step,” it “cannot meet

RICO’s direct relationship requirement.” Id., at 10.

Given the number of steps in Horn’s theory and the mul-

tiple actors involved, this requirement may present an in-

surmountable obstacle in his case. Indeed, even Horn con-

cedes that he faces “a heavy burden on remand.” Tr. of Oral

Arg. 45, 63, 70. There is, after all, some distance between

18 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

Opinion of the Court

the first link in the chain (Medical Marijuana’s misrepre-

sentations) and the last (Horn’s job loss).

Second, pleading a RICO claim is not as simple as point-

ing to a business or property harm. A plaintiff must first

establish a pattern of racketeering activity. 18 U. S. C.

§§1962, 1964(c). Doing so requires identifying two or more

predicate crimes “within a single scheme that were related

and that amounted to, or threatened the likelihood of, con-

tinued criminal activity.” H. J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell

Telephone Co., 492 U. S. 229, 237 (1989); see also §§1961(1)

and (5), 1962. So harm resulting from a single tort is not a

ticket to federal court for treble damages.

Third, the reach of §1964(c) turns on more than the

meaning of “injured.” As we noted at the outset, “business”

may not encompass every aspect of employment, and “prop-

erty” may not include every penny in the plaintiff ’s pocket-

book. Accordingly, not every monetary harm—be it lost

wages, medical expenses, or otherwise—necessarily impli-

cates RICO. Medical Marijuana brushes away this possi-

bility, instead attributing the broadest definitions to both

terms.

All of this said, civil RICO has undeniably evolved “into

something quite different from the original conception of its

enactors.” Sedima, 473 U. S., at 500. More suits are

brought against ordinary businesses than against “arche-

typal, intimidating mobster[s],” id., at 499, and given this

development, Medical Marijuana is not the first litigant to

express concern about “the ‘over-federalization’ of tradi-

tional state-law claims,” Bridge, 553 U. S., at 659. But we

respond today as we have before: If the breadth of the stat-

ute “leads to the undue proliferation of RICO suits, the ‘cor-

rection must lie with Congress.’ ” Id., at 660 (quoting

Sedima, 473 U. S., at 499); see also H. J. Inc., 492 U. S., at

248–249; Boyle v. United States, 556 U. S. 938, 950–951

(2009).

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 19

Opinion of the Court

* * *

The phrase “injured in his business or property” does not

preclude recovery for all economic harms that result from

personal injuries. We therefore affirm the Second Circuit’s

judgment and remand the case for further proceedings con-

sistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 1

JACKSON, J., concurring

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 23–365

_________________

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v.

DOUGLAS J. HORN

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

[April 2, 2025]

JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring.

When Congress speaks, courts should listen. Congress

has instructed that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt

Organizations Act (RICO) “shall be liberally construed to

effectuate its remedial purposes.” §904(a), 84 Stat. 947.

That instruction applies with particular force to the reme-

dial provision of RICO at issue in this case, 18 U. S. C.

§1964(c), which creates “a private action for those injured

by racketeering activity.” Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co.,

473 U. S. 479, 498 (1985). In rejecting petitioners’ attempts

to add atextual hurdles to §1964(c), today’s decision accords

with Congress’s liberal-construction directive. In my view,

that provides one more reason that the decision is right.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 1

THOMAS, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 23–365

_________________

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v.

DOUGLAS J. HORN

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

[April 2, 2025]

JUSTICE THOMAS, dissenting.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act

(RICO) allows any person “injured in his business or prop-

erty by reason of ” racketeering activity to bring a civil suit

for damages. 18 U. S. C. §1964(c). All agree that this “civil

RICO” statute forbids suits based on “personal injuries.”

RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 579 U. S. 325,

348, 350 (2016). We granted certiorari in this case to re-

solve a Circuit split on “[w]hether economic harms resulting

from personal injuries” are “injuries to ‘business or prop-

erty’ ” under civil RICO or are instead personal-injury dam-

ages. Pet. for Cert. i. But, this case has proved ill suited

for deciding the question presented. The parties dispute an

important threshold issue: whether the plaintiff here suf-

fered a personal injury in the first place. And, they have

inadequately briefed their views on the meaning of the key

statutory phrase “injured in his business or property.”

§1964(c). Perhaps due to these difficulties, the Court today

issues a narrow opinion that elides the parties’ primary dis-

putes. Rather than opine on ancillary issues, I would dis-

miss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. I re-

spectfully dissent.

I

Plaintiff Douglas Horn lost his job as a commercial truck

2 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

THOMAS, J., dissenting

driver after a random drug test revealed tetrahydrocanna-

binol (THC) in his system. Horn asserts that the THC came

from his ingestion of Dixie X, an over-the-counter medicinal

product manufactured and sold by Medical Marijuana,

Inc.* Medical Marijuana advertised Dixie X as THC-free,

but a third-party laboratory detected THC in the product.

Horn sued Medical Marijuana in Federal District Court,

alleging various state-law claims and a violation of civil

RICO. To establish a civil RICO violation, a plaintiff must

prove that a defendant engaged in a “pattern of racketeer-

ing activity” that caused the plaintiff to be “injured in his

business or property.” §§1962, 1964(c). Horn alleged that

Medical Marijuana engaged in mail and wire fraud—forms

of racketeering activity under RICO—and that, as a result,

he suffered a business or property injury in the form of lost

employment.

Medical Marijuana moved for summary judgment on

some of Horn’s state-law claims on the ground that Horn

had not suffered a personal injury, an essential element of

those claims. Specifically, Medical Marijuana asserted that

Horn had “failed to produce any evidence or testimony that

[he] suffered any bodily injury from ingesting Dixie X.”

Memorandum of Law in Support of Defendants et al. in

No. 15–cv–701 (WDNY, Aug. 30, 2018), ECF Doc. 62–1,

p. 27. In Medical Marijuana’s view, “[t]he only loss” Horn

even “attempted to establish through discovery” was that

he lost his “jo[b] and . . . source of income.” Ibid.

The District Court accepted Medical Marijuana’s argu-

ment and rejected some of Horn’s state-law claims based on

his failure to establish a personal injury. 383 F. Supp. 3d

114, 134 (WDNY 2019). The court explained that although

Horn seeks damages for “economic losses,” he does “not

——————

*Petitioners include Medical Marijuana, Inc., Red Dice Holdings, LLC,

and Dixie Holdings, LLC, all of which were involved in the production

and sale of Dixie X. I refer to petitioners as Medical Marijuana through-

out this opinion.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 3

THOMAS, J., dissenting

claim that [he] suffered any personal injury . . . as a result

of [Medical Marijuana’s] conduct.” Ibid.

The District Court’s summary judgment ruling left two

claims for trial: a state-law fraudulent inducement claim

and the civil RICO claim.

On the eve of trial, Medical Marijuana argued for the first

time that Horn’s civil RICO claim failed as a matter of law

because it was based on a “personal injury.” Memorandum

of Law in Reply to Motion In Limine in No. 15–cv–701

(WDNY, Aug. 2, 2021), ECF Doc. 200, p. 4. It asserted that

the only injury Horn alleged was the unwanted “in-

gest[ion]” of “trace amounts of THC,” and that this kind of

injury “is, fundamentally, a type of ‘personal injury.’ ” Id.,

at 10, 12. Horn’s lost wages, according to Medical Mariju-

ana, were merely “damages” that “derive from a personal

injury,” and thus “are not recoverable under . . . civil RICO.”

Id., at 5 (capitalization and boldface deleted).

Notwithstanding its earlier determination that Horn had

not suffered a personal injury for purposes of the state-law

claims, the District Court adopted Medical Marijuana’s new

theory and held that Horn’s civil RICO claim was based on

an impermissible “personal injury: the bodily invasion that

[Horn] suffered when he unwittingly ingested THC.” 2021

WL 4173195, *3 (WDNY, Sept. 14, 2021). And, because civil

RICO precludes suits based on personal injuries, the Dis-

trict Court determined that Horn’s civil RICO claim

“fail[ed] as a matter of law.” Id., at *5. The District Court

granted partial final judgment on the civil RICO claim to

allow Horn to appeal.

Before the Second Circuit, Horn did not contest the Dis-

trict Court’s holding that civil RICO excludes suits based on

economic harms resulting from personal injuries. Rather,

he argued that he had not suffered a personal injury in the

first place.

The Second Circuit declined to decide whether Horn had

suffered a personal injury. Instead, the court resolved what

4 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

THOMAS, J., dissenting

it described as the “logically antecedent legal question”:

whether civil RICO “bars a plaintiff from suing for injuries

to business or property simply because they flow from, or

are derivative of, a personal injury.” 80 F. 4th 130, 135, n. 2

(2023). Deepening a Circuit split, the Second Circuit held

that civil RICO permits a plaintiff to sue for injuries to busi-

ness or property that “flow from, or are derivative of, an an-

tecedent personal injury.” Id., at 135.

Medical Marijuana petitioned this Court for certiorari,

asking us to decide whether economic harms resulting from

personal injuries are injuries to “business or property” un-

der civil RICO. Pet. for Cert. i. It assured us that “[t]his

case cleanly tees that circuit split up for resolution,” and

that the case would “tur[n] on a narrow, dispositive, and

discrete question of statutory interpretation that requires

little analysis of the underlying facts.” Id., at 4 (internal

quotation marks omitted). We granted certiorari. 601 U. S.

___ (2024).

II

I would dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently

granted. The question presented has divided the Circuits

and merits this Court’s attention. But, the parties dispute

an important, factbound, threshold issue that the court be-

low did not pass upon. And, the intertwined question of

how to define a civil RICO injury is inadequately briefed.

A

We took this case to decide whether economic losses flow-

ing from personal injuries are injuries to business or prop-

erty for purposes of civil RICO, or merely damages. That

question necessarily assumes the existence of a personal in-

jury as the starting point.

Yet, in this case, the parties vigorously contest whether

Horn suffered a personal injury at all. Despite its earlier

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 5

THOMAS, J., dissenting

theory that Horn had not suffered a personal injury, see su-

pra, at 2–3, Medical Marijuana now argues that “Horn suf-

fered a quintessential personal injury” by “ingesting an un-

wanted substance.” Brief for Petitioners 20. Horn, by

contrast, contends that he “did not suffer any harm to his

person,” and that his injuries were only economic in nature.

Tr. of Oral Arg. 67; Brief for Respondent 29.

The Second Circuit expressly sidestepped the question

whether Horn suffered a personal injury by ingesting Dixie

X. 80 F. 4th, at 135, n. 2. The only court to have passed on

the issue—the District Court—expressed different views at

different points. See supra, at 2–3.

I would not decide whether losses flowing from personal

injuries are injuries to business or property in a case where

no one knows whether the plaintiff suffered a personal in-

jury in the first place. If Horn did not suffer a personal in-

jury, then our resolution of the question presented will have

no bearing on this case. Because federal courts may not

“render advisory opinions . . . advising what the law would

be upon a hypothetical state of facts,” Preiser v. Newkirk,

422 U. S. 395, 401 (1975) (internal quotation marks omit-

ted), we ordinarily do not decide matters unless we know

that our decision will have some import for the parties be-

fore us. Given the lack of clarity on whether Horn suffered

a personal injury, we cannot be assured that our resolution

of the question presented would affect the parties here.

Even if resolving a question that might not affect these

parties is “a permissible course, it does not strike me as the

most sensible one.” Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy,

601 U. S. 366, 376 (2024) (GORSUCH, J., dissenting). The

question presented asks us to analyze the nature of losses

that flow from a personal injury. It is difficult to analyze

the nature of downstream losses when the nature of the in-

itial event is unknown. Medical Marijuana asserts that the

kind of loss at issue here—lost wages—can sometimes con-

stitute an “injury,” depending on the circumstances and the

6 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

THOMAS, J., dissenting

event from which the lost wages flow. Reply Brief 15. That

we do not know whether this case involves a personal injury

severely “complicates our inquiry,” and thus counsels in fa-

vor of dismissing the writ of certiorari as improvidently

granted. McDonough v. Smith, 588 U. S. 109, 125 (2019)

(THOMAS, J., dissenting); accord, Arizona v. City and

County of San Francisco, 596 U. S. 763, 766 (2022)

(ROBERTS, C. J., concurring) (concurring in the dismissal of

the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted because

other contested issues “could stand in the way of our reach-

ing the question presented . . . or at the very least, compli-

cate our resolution of that question”).

Of course, we could decide for ourselves whether Horn

suffered a personal injury. But, “we are a court of review,

not of first view.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718,

n. 7 (2005). And, whether Horn suffered a personal injury

is a case-specific factual finding. Such questions do not or-

dinarily merit our review. See this Court’s Rule 10.

Moreover, it is not clear to me that Medical Marijuana is

even entitled to argue that Horn suffered a personal injury.

The rule of judicial estoppel “ ‘generally prevents a party

from prevailing in one phase of a case on an argument and

then relying on a contradictory argument to prevail in an-

other phase.’ ” New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U. S. 742, 749

(2001). Medical Marijuana initially argued that Horn had

not alleged a cognizable personal injury. See supra, at 2.

The District Court agreed and dismissed some of Horn’s

state-law tort claims on that ground. Then, shortly before

trial, Medical Marijuana argued that the remaining civil

RICO claim failed because Horn had based the claim on a

personal injury. Horn has made a nonfrivolous argument

that Medical Marijuana should be judicially estopped from

arguing that he suffered a personal injury. Brief in Oppo-

sition 19–20. Depending on the outcome before this Court,

the estoppel issue could be litigated on remand. This addi-

tional complication is yet another reason to dismiss the writ

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 7

THOMAS, J., dissenting

of certiorari as improvidently granted.

Resolving the question presented would be far more

straightforward in a case where the personal injury is be-

yond dispute. For example, imagine a case in which rack-

eteering activity inflicts a classic personal injury—such as

a broken arm—and as a result, the plaintiff suffers eco-

nomic loss in the form of medical expenses. Such a case

would cleanly tee up the question dividing the Circuits:

whether the economic loss flowing from a personal injury

qualifies as an injury to business or property under civil

RICO.

The question presented is important and merits our at-

tention. But, we should save the question for a case where

all agree that the plaintiff suffered a personal injury and

where our resolution of the question will unambiguously

matter.

B

The question presented is also bound up with a related

question—that is, the definition of the phrase “injured in

his business or property” in civil RICO. §1964(c). To un-

derstand whether Horn’s civil RICO claim is based on an

“injur[y] in his business or property,” it would be helpful to

understand the meaning of that phrase in the civil RICO

statute. Ibid. But, I would not decide that weighty question

here because the court below did not do so, and neither

party offers a complete definition of the phrase.

The Second Circuit did not decide the meaning of “injured

in his business or property.” Ibid. In its view, “[b]y using

the disjunctive ‘or’ to separate ‘business’ from ‘property,’

Congress made clear that ‘business’ was not intended to

modify ‘property,’ nor was ‘property’ intended to modify

‘business.’ ” 80 F. 4th, at 135–136. Thus, the Second Circuit

evaluated the meaning of “business” without considering

the meaning of “property.” Id., at 136.

Similarly, neither party offers a complete definition of

8 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

THOMAS, J., dissenting

“injured in his business or property.” §1964(c). Horn ar-

gues that an injury to “business” is any harm to one’s em-

ployment, and employment, in Horn’s view, “embraces eve-

rything about which a person can be employed.” Brief for

Respondent 12 (internal quotation marks omitted). But,

Horn says little about what it means to be “injured in his

. . . property.” §1964(c). Medical Marijuana, for its part,

argues that an injury to business or property is the invasion

of a legal right that one holds in his business or property.

Brief for Petitioners 11. But, nowhere does Medical Mari-

juana tell us exactly how it would define those legal rights.

At times it has suggested that courts should look to state

tort law, but, it says little about how courts should assess

whether the plaintiff has suffered a qualifying tort. Given

the state of the briefing on this matter, we are not well po-

sitioned to decide the meaning of “injured in his business or

property” in this case. §1964(c).

In my view, the Court should interpret the meaning of

“injured in his business or property” in its entirety. The

ordinary rule is that “a word is known by the company it

keeps.” Dubin v. United States, 599 U. S. 110, 124 (2023)

(internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the meaning of

“property”—and the way that courts determine the mean-

ing of that term—is likely to bear on the meaning of “busi-

ness.” It may be important that a number of courts have

held that “whether a particular interest amounts to prop-

erty is quintessentially a question of state law.” Doe v. Roe,

958 F. 2d 763, 768 (CA7 1992) (citing Logan v. Zimmerman

Brush Co., 455 U. S. 422, 430 (1982)); see also Price v. Pin-

nacle Brands, Inc., 138 F. 3d 602, 607 (CA5 1998) (per cu-

riam) (explaining that courts “may look to state law to de-

termine, for RICO purposes, whether a property interest

exists”). Until we are prepared to define the entirety of the

phrase “injured in his business or property,” my preference

is to say nothing at all.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 9

THOMAS, J., dissenting

III

The Court’s opinion underscores why we should dismiss

the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. Perhaps

due to the difficulties described above, the Court declines to

resolve the question presented. It also declines to offer de-

finitive guidance on what it means for a plaintiff to be “in-

jured in his business or property.” §1964(c). Instead, as

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH explains, “the Court charts an unu-

sual middle way.” Post, at 3 (dissenting opinion). It affirms

a component of the Second Circuit’s decision that no party

seems to dispute. It then defines one word within the dis-

puted statutory phrase, leaving the most critical and out-

come-determinative issues for another day. If these limited

holdings are the most we can offer, then our grant of certi-

orari was plainly improvident.

A

The Court affirms the Second Circuit’s conclusion that

civil RICO “does not preclude recovery for all economic

harms that result from personal injuries.” Ante, at 19. In

other words, the Court affirms the Second Circuit’s deter-

mination that civil RICO does not contain a so-called “ante-

cedent-personal-injury bar.” 80 F. 4th, at 137. But, as far

as I can tell, no party has ever contested that point.

The “antecedent-personal-injury bar” appears to be a con-

cept invented by the Second Circuit. The bar, if applied to

civil RICO, would preclude a plaintiff from recovering for

an injury to business or property simply because the injury

happens to follow a personal injury in the causal chain. In

other words, the theory goes, once the plaintiff suffers a per-

sonal injury, he may not recover for any subsequent injuries

to his business or property that follow or flow from it.

In my view, the majority misunderstands Medical Mari-

juana to be advocating for that rule. See ante, at 14. The

majority describes the “only question” before us as “whether

civil RICO bars recovery for all business or property harms

10 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

THOMAS, J., dissenting

that derive from a personal injury.” Ante, at 5. But, that

reformulation of the question presented miscasts Medical

Marijuana’s argument. Medical Marijuana concedes that

some harms to business or property are actionable under

civil RICO, even if they follow or flow from a personal in-

jury. See Brief for Petitioners 33–34. Its point is that not

all harms to business or property are injuries to business or

property under civil RICO. In its view, some economic

harms—such as medical expenses, or, as relevant here,

some forms of lost wages—are better conceived of as dam-

ages. Thus, the question squarely before us is whether the

economic harms in this case—Horn’s lost wages—consti-

tute a cognizable injury to business or property under civil

RICO or are instead personal-injury damages.

I agree with the Court’s conclusion that civil RICO does

not bar recovery for all economic harms that result from a

personal injury. So do the other dissenters. Post, at 20–21

(opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). And, as far as I can tell, so do

all the parties and the court below. See Brief for Petitioners

34; Brief for Respondent 18–21; 80 F. 4th, at 137. We do

not ordinarily take a case to settle an issue on which there

is no disagreement.

B

The Court’s other holding is that “injured” in civil RICO

means “harmed.” Ante, at 5–6. But, defining one word

within the phrase “injured in his business or property,”

§1964(c), sidesteps the core of the parties’ disagreement.

The parties dispute the meaning of the phrase “injured in

his business or property.” §1964(c). Although the parties

would define “injured” in slightly different terms, their big-

gest disagreement concerns what is injured or harmed. Ac-

cording to Horn, a plaintiff can bring a civil RICO suit so

long as his business—broadly defined to mean “everything”

about employment—is harmed. Brief for Respondent 12

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 11

THOMAS, J., dissenting

(internal quotation marks omitted). And, according to Med-

ical Marijuana, a plaintiff can bring a civil RICO suit only

if his legally protected right in his business or property is

invaded (or, in other words, injured or harmed). See Brief

for Petitioners 11. The modest conclusion that “injured”

means “harmed” leaves the scope of the relevant harm un-

resolved.

The Court’s limited holding is bound to “leave substantial

confusion and litigation in its wake.” Post, at 25 (opinion of

KAVANAUGH, J.). Notwithstanding its decision to affirm,

the Court is unwilling to say that Horn has alleged a cog-

nizable injury to his business under civil RICO. The Court

makes clear that it is not deciding whether the Second Cir-

cuit correctly interpreted “business” to encompass “employ-

ment.” Ante, at 5. The Court also makes clear that it is not

deciding the definition of “property.” Ibid. I appreciate the

hesitation to define an entire phrase in a case where neither

party offers a complete definition. But, rather than define

one word in isolation, I would wait for a better case.

* * *

The decision below implicates a genuine Circuit split, but

the parties dispute a factbound, threshold issue that di-

rectly bears on the question presented. And, the related is-

sue of how to define “injured in his business or property,”

§1964(c), was not decided below and is inadequately

briefed. I would therefore dismiss the writ of certiorari as

improvidently granted. I respectfully dissent.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 1

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 23–365

_________________

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v.

DOUGLAS J. HORN

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

[April 2, 2025]

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE

and JUSTICE ALITO join, dissenting.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations

Act, known as RICO, provides that any “person injured in

his business or property by reason of a violation” of the Act

“shall recover threefold the damages he sustains.” 18

U. S. C. §1964(c) (emphasis added). Under the text of

RICO, therefore, a plaintiff may sue for “business or

property” injuries, and he may seek recovery of the

damages he sustains from those injuries. But a plaintiff

may not sue for “personal injuries.” RJR Nabisco, Inc. v.

European Community, 579 U. S. 325, 350 (2016).

Importantly, and key to my disagreement with the

Court’s opinion in this case, the term “injured” is a tort-law

term of art and therefore “should be given its established

common-law meaning.” United States v. Castleman, 572

U. S. 157, 163 (2014) (quotation marks omitted). In tort

law, the term “injured” means to have suffered “the

invasion of any legally protected interest.” Restatement

(Second) of Torts §7(1) (1964). Personal, property, and

business injuries all have well-defined meanings in tort

law: They mean the invasion of a legal right in one’s person,

property, or business, respectively.

The dispute in this case arises because personal injuries

in tort law, and thus also in RICO cases, often result in

2 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

losses or damages that are related to the victim’s business

or property. For example, personal injuries from defective

products or car accidents often lead to lost wages (loss of

“business” according to plaintiff Horn) and medical

expenses (loss of “property” according to Horn).

So the fundamental question here is whether business or

property losses from a personal injury transform a

traditional personal-injury suit into a business-injury or

property-injury suit that can be brought in federal court for

treble damages under RICO. Plaintiff Horn and the Second

Circuit say that the answer is yes. Defendant Medical

Marijuana, as well as the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh

Circuits, contend that the answer is no—that RICO does

not authorize suits for personal injuries regardless of what

losses or damages a victim sustains from a personal injury.

I agree with defendant Medical Marijuana and the Sixth,

Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits.

A plaintiff cannot circumvent RICO’s categorical

exclusion of personal-injury suits simply by alleging that a

personal injury resulted in losses of business or property,

thereby converting otherwise excluded personal-injury

suits into business- or property-injury suits. If the rule

were otherwise, as plaintiff Horn advocates here, RICO

would federalize many traditional personal-injury tort

suits. When enacting civil RICO in 1970, Congress did not

purport to usher in such a massive change to the American

tort system. As the Eleventh Circuit rightly said, if

“Congress intended to create a federal treble damages

remedy for cases involving bodily injury, injury to

reputation, mental or emotional anguish, or the like, all of

which will cause some financial loss, it could have enacted

a statute referring to injury generally, without any

restrictive language.” Grogan v. Platt, 835 F. 2d 844, 847

(1988) (quotation marks omitted). Congress did not enact

such a statute. On the contrary, it excluded personal-injury

suits. And it is not remotely plausible to conclude that

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 3

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

Congress excluded personal-injury suits under RICO and

then turned around and somehow still implicitly authorized

most personal-injury suits under RICO.

For its part, the Court today neither fully agrees with

plaintiff Horn and the Second Circuit, nor fully agrees with

defendant Medical Marijuana and the Sixth, Seventh, and

Eleventh Circuits. Instead, the Court charts an unusual

middle way. The Court agrees with Horn that the term

“injured” in RICO is not a tort-law term of art and therefore

should be read according to its ordinary conversational

meaning, rather than its longstanding legal meaning.

Therefore, the Court agrees with Horn that personal-injury

suits are not excluded by RICO so long as the personal

injuries lead to “business or property loss.” Ante, at 6. But

the Court then declines to decide whether lost wages and

medical expenses (which are among the most common

economic damages in personal-injury suits) qualify as

business or property losses recoverable in those RICO suits.

By concluding that traditional personal-injury suits are

not excluded by RICO and then punting on the critical

questions of whether lost wages and medical expenses are

recoverable losses of business or property in those RICO

suits, the Court’s opinion both errs on the law and leaves

substantial confusion in its wake. The aftermath of the

Court’s opinion could be quite a mess, as courts grapple

with RICO personal-injury cases where the question is

what losses qualify as business or property losses.

Unlike the Court, I would heed the text of the statute,

recognize that the term “injured” in RICO is a longstanding

tort-law term of art, and keep things relatively simple:

RICO excludes suits for personal injuries, regardless of

what losses or damages ensue from those personal injuries.

I

For three reasons, I conclude that RICO does not

authorize suits for personal injuries even when those

4 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

personal injuries result in losses or damages related to one’s

business or property: (1) the text of RICO excludes

personal-injury suits and incorporates traditional tort-law

principles about what injury means; (2) this Court’s

antitrust precedents, which interpret the same “injured in

his business or property” language on which RICO was

deliberately modeled, confirm that RICO excludes all losses

resulting solely from personal injuries; and (3) the

federalism canon counsels against federalizing large

swaths of ordinary state-court tort cases absent clear

direction from Congress.

A

First is the statutory text. RICO expressly distinguishes

among different kinds of injuries—personal injuries versus

business or property injuries.

When it enacted RICO in 1970, Congress did not pluck

the word “injured” out of thin air. Rather, Congress

adopted language that comes straight from longstanding

tort-law principles. And those longstanding tort-law

principles matter when courts construe RICO: In

interpreting statutory torts, this Court starts “from the

premise that when Congress creates a federal tort it adopts

the background of general tort law.” Staub v. Proctor

Hospital, 562 U. S. 411, 417 (2011). Therefore, to define the

scope of civil RICO’s cause of action, this Court has

repeatedly looked to “general common-law” tort principles

regarding “legal injury.” Bridge v. Phoenix Bond &

Indemnity Co., 553 U. S. 639, 656 (2008); see Beck v. Prupis,

529 U. S. 494, 500–501 (2000).

Stated otherwise, “injured” is a “common-law term of art”

that “should be given its established common-law

meaning.” United States v. Castleman, 572 U. S. 157, 163

(2014) (quotation marks omitted). Here, as elsewhere,

when “Congress transplants a common-law term, the ‘old

soil’ comes with it.” United States v. Hansen, 599 U. S. 762,

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 5

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

778 (2023) (quotation marks omitted).

What constitutes injury as a matter of traditional tort

law? For tort-law purposes, injury is the infringement of a

legal right—“the invasion of any legally protected interest

of another.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §7(1).

And with injury so defined, Congress’s “cabining RICO’s

private cause of action to particular kinds of injury”—

business or property injuries, not personal injuries—makes

perfect sense. RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community,

579 U. S. 325, 350 (2016). That is because tort law has long

categorized different kinds of legal injuries along precisely

those lines.

Personal injury includes “acts constituting a tort because

intended or likely to cause bodily harm or emotional

distress.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §924, Comment a

(1977); see id., ch. 2, Introductory Note, at 22; Ballentine’s

Law Dictionary 941 (3d ed. 1969). Typical personal-injury

claims may involve, for example, car accidents or defective

products.

Property injury—like trespass or conversion—is an act

“materially affecting the capacity of particular property for

ordinary use and enjoyment” or “the diminishing” of one’s

“property” by tortious means. Ballentine’s, at 627; see

Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203 U. S.

390, 396, 398–399 (1906).

Those categories are long and widely recognized. In

detailing the “several injuries cognizable by the courts of

common law,” Blackstone separated “wrongs or injuries

that affected the rights of persons” from “such injuries as

affect the rights of property.” 3 W. Blackstone,

Commentaries on the Laws of England 115, 144 (1768). As

one court phrased it 150 years later, actions “to recover

damages caused by bodily injuries, or by injuries to

property,” were “well known as distinct classes of actions”

and “each separately treated in the text books of law”—and

“so clearly distinguished” that “there is no difficulty in

6 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

recognizing and classifying them.” Gridley v. Fellows, 166

Cal. 765, 769, 138 P. 355, 357 (1914); see Kelley v. Boyne,

239 Mich. 204, 213, 214 N. W. 316, 319 (1927).

Business injury such as unfair competition and tortious

interference with contract eventually developed into its

own standalone tort-law category, distinct from personal or

property injury. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

courts and commentators embraced the general principle

that “to interfere with a man’s trade by a malicious act is

actionable” because it violates “a concrete right as distinct

as his right to his lands and chattels, one which imposes on

his fellows a correlative duty, the breach of which is a tort.”

E. McClennen, Some of the Rights of Traders and Laborers,

16 Harv. L. Rev. 237, 237–238, 241 (1903); cf. F. Cooke, The

Law of Combinations, Monopolies and Labor Unions §7 (2d

ed. 1909). And by 1938, the First Restatement included a

division titled “Interference with Business Relations” that

described trade-related wrongs like unfair competition and

tortious interference with contract. See Restatement

(First) of Torts, div. 9.

In short, tort law has long distinguished personal-injury

suits from business-injury or property-injury suits. And

RICO incorporated that traditional distinction into the

statutory text. Like some of the States, Congress could

have decided to authorize RICO suits for any person who

has been “injured,” period, which would have covered

personal-injury suits as well as business- or property-injury

suits. See Ga. Code Ann. §16–14–6(c) (2024); Fla. Stat.

§772.104(1) (2023). But Congress instead decided to limit

civil RICO suits to plaintiffs who have been “injured in”

their “business or property.”

More specifically, RICO’s private right of action is

available to a person who has suffered a business or

property injury “by reason of a violation” of RICO. §1964(c).

And a RICO violation generally requires the defendant to

have engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity,” where

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 7

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

“racketeering activity” includes conduct chargeable as any

of a host of state- and federal-law crimes, such as money

laundering, extortion, and mail or wire fraud, to take some

common examples. §1962; see §§1961(1), (5). The question

for a court under civil RICO is simply whether the plaintiff

was “injured in his business or property by reason of ”

whatever the defendant did to violate RICO. §1964(c).

One further important point: Under tort law, injury is

distinct from the losses or damages that result from an

injury. Since before the Founding, courts have

distinguished “injury” from “damage.” Uzuegbunam v.

Preczewski, 592 U. S. 279, 286 (2021) (citing Cable v.

Rogers, 3 Bulst. 311, 312, 81 Eng. Rep. 259 (K. B. 1625)).

Stated simply, injury is “the illegal invasion of a legal right;

damage is the loss, hurt, or harm which results from the

injury.” Ballentine’s, at 303; see Black’s Law Dictionary

466 (rev. 4th ed. 1968).

For example, negligently driving a car into a pedestrian

inflicts a legal injury on the pedestrian—wrongful invasion

of the pedestrian’s physical safety. The pedestrian’s losses

or damages resulting from the injury typically will include

his lost wages and medical expenses, among other things

like pain and suffering. The injury (the hit from the

negligently driven car) gives the pedestrian a right to sue;

the lost wages, medical expenses, and pain and suffering

that follow are damages that a plaintiff may be able to

recover for the injury. See Restatement (Second) of Torts

§§910, 912, Comment a.

All of that means that when a victim suffers only a

personal injury (such as from a car accident or defective

product), his lost wages and medical expenses are merely

the losses or damages that result from that personal injury,

not themselves a separate business or property injury—

that is, not a distinct infringement of a legal right in one’s

business or property.

Therefore, a victim who suffers only a personal injury “by

8 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

reason of ” a RICO violation has not been “injured” in his

“business or property,” even if that personal injury leads

him to lose wages or incur medical expenses. That victim

may not sue under RICO.

B

This Court’s antitrust precedents further confirm that

RICO’s exclusion of personal-injury suits means what it

says and cannot be circumvented by recharacterizing

personal-injury losses or damages (such as lost wages or

medical expenses) as their own standalone business or

property injuries.

By the time Congress enacted RICO in 1970, this Court

had already interpreted identical text in the antitrust

laws—“injured in his business or property”—to adhere to

the traditional tort-law understanding of business or

property injuries as distinct from personal injuries. Those

prior antitrust holdings interpreting that same statutory

language carry weight both as a matter of precedent and

because this Court presumes that in enacting RICO,

Congress adopted “the interpretation federal courts had

given the words earlier Congresses had used” in the

antitrust laws. Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection

Corporation, 503 U. S. 258, 268 (1992); see, e.g., Agency

Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U. S.

143, 151 (1987).

Enacted long before RICO, the Sherman and Clayton

Acts provided that any “person who shall be injured in his

business or property . . . by reason of ” an antitrust violation

may “sue therefor” and “shall recover three fold the

damages by him sustained.” Sherman Act, §7, 26 Stat. 210

(1890) (emphasis added); see Clayton Act, §4, 38 Stat. 731

(1914), as amended, 15 U. S. C. §15(a). And in applying

that statutory text, the Court opined that “injured in his

business or property” had its traditional tort-law meaning.

The Court expressly said so in an antitrust price-fixing

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 9

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

case, Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co., 260 U. S. 156

(1922). There, the Court accepted that the plaintiff “was

damaged” directly by the defendants’ illegal conduct—he

“lost the benefit of rates” that “he would have enjoyed” “but

for the conspiracy.” Id., at 160, 162. But being

“damaged”—suffering a loss—was not what the statutory

text demanded. The Sherman Act required legal injury. As

the Court put it, “Section 7 of the Anti-Trust Act” gave “a

right of action” only to “one who has been ‘injured in his

business or property.’ Injury implies violation of a legal

right.” Id., at 163 (emphasis added).

In other words, the Keogh Court ruled that “injured”

referred to the violation of a legal right, not to the harm or

damage resulting from the violation of a legal right. And so

the Court went on to determine whether the plaintiff had

been legally “injured”—which, in Keogh, he had not.1

Therefore, for an antitrust plaintiff to be “injured in his

business or property,” this Court and others have required

that the plaintiff be legally wronged in a business or

——————

1 The Court does not offer a persuasive substantive response to what it

calls “century-old” precedent (i.e., case law from the time shortly after

the antitrust laws were enacted). The Court instead tries minimizing it.

Ante, at 11, n. 7. But the requirement of legal injury is not a “single

sentence” from Keogh: It is the holding of Keogh—a holding that has

been followed to the present day. Specifically, the fixed rates in Keogh

were filed with and approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

260 U. S., at 160. The plaintiff suffered no “legal” “[i]njury” from rates

elevated by price-fixing because the regulator-approved rate was the

“legal rate.” Id., at 163. In that circumstance, although the plaintiff

suffered a loss, there was no legal injury. Keogh’s holding is plainly

contrary to the Court’s test. And Keogh is not a one-off, as all of the other

above cases applying a legal-injury rule (especially Chattanooga Foundry

& Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203 U. S. 390 (1906)) make clear. That is why

this Court has continued to reaffirm Keogh, going so far as to repeatedly

call it “settled law.” Square D Co. v. Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau,

Inc., 476 U. S. 409, 415–417, 420, 422, 424 (1986); see, e.g., South Branch

LLC v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 46 F. 4th 646, 650–652 (CA7 2022)

(applying Keogh’s definition to civil RICO).

10 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

property interest as traditionally understood. See

Chattanooga Foundry, 203 U. S., at 396, 399; Gerli v. Silk

Assn. of Am., 36 F. 2d 959, 960 (SDNY 1929). The question

is whether the plaintiff ’s business or property rights were

legally violated—not whether the plaintiff suffered some

sort of business or property loss or damage from an injury.

In Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., the Court applied those basic

principles to hold that the antitrust laws “exclude personal

injuries.” 442 U. S. 330, 339 (1979). That is true, the Court

suggested, even when the personal injuries led to losses or

damages related to the plaintiff ’s business or property. As

its example of excluded personal injuries, the Court cited

Hamman v. United States, 267 F. Supp. 420 (Mont. 1967).

In Hamman, the plaintiffs had tried to evade the personal-

injury exclusion by contending that their property damage

from a personal injury itself qualified as a distinct property

injury for purposes of the antitrust laws. Id., at 429, 432.

Under the antitrust laws, however, that argument does not

suffice, which is presumably why the Reiter Court cited

Hamman as exactly the kind of personal-injury suit that

the antitrust laws exclude. 442 U. S., at 339. The Reiter

Court’s citation to Hamman supports the conclusion that

damages to one’s business or property from personal

injuries do not somehow magically transform those

personal injuries into distinct business or property injuries

that can be alleged in an antitrust suit.

To summarize: Antitrust law has long required plaintiffs

to allege business or property injuries, and has long

excluded suits for personal injuries. And critically,

antitrust law has defined “injured” as traditionally

understood under tort law—that is, as an invasion of a legal

right and distinct from the losses or damages that ensue.2

——————

2 The Court points to (1) the rule that paying higher-than-competitive

prices is an antitrust injury; and (2) a single conclusory line from one per

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 11

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

RICO aims “to compensate the same type of injury” as the

antitrust laws; “each requires that a plaintiff show injury

‘in his business or property by reason of ’ a violation.”

Agency Holding, 483 U. S., at 151. Those antitrust

precedents therefore strongly buttress the conclusion that

RICO excludes personal-injury torts, regardless of what

kinds of losses or damages ensue. See, e.g., Gause v. Philip

Morris, 2000 WL 34016343, *4–*5 (EDNY, Aug. 8, 2000)

(rejecting an attempt to reframe loss of income from

emphysema as a property injury under RICO).

In RICO, Congress surely did not copy verbatim antitrust

law’s well-established business or property requirement in

order to silently convert ordinary personal-injury tort cases

into federal RICO lawsuits with treble damages available.

C

Third, even if the above textual and precedential points

do not themselves clinch the matter, the federalism canon

weighs heavily against reading RICO to encompass

traditional personal-injury suits.

The federalism canon directs courts not to significantly

alter the federal-state balance absent “exceedingly clear

language” from Congress. Sackett v. EPA, 598 U. S. 651,

679 (2023) (quotation marks omitted); see, e.g., Gregory v.

Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 460 (1991). If RICO covered

——————

curiam opinion from the 1960s. Ante, at 11–12. But the first rule is just

the holding of Reiter, which specifically relied on a 1906 legal-injury

precedent to hold that a payment induced at an illegal price is injury in

one’s property. 442 U. S., at 340 (“A person whose property is diminished

by a payment of money wrongfully induced is injured in his property”

(quoting Chattanooga Foundry, 203 U. S., at 396 (quotation marks

omitted))). And as for the 1960s case, the Court there merely said that

“all the law requires” is damage to the plaintiff as compared to “economic

harm” to “the public at large.” Radiant Burners, Inc. v. Peoples Gas Light

& Coke Co., 364 U. S. 656, 659–660 (1961) (per curiam) (quotation marks

omitted).

12 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

personal injuries that lead to lost wages and medical

expenses, as Horn advocates, then civil RICO would

federalize huge swaths of state tort law in a manner that

Congress never contemplated or authorized.

That reading would eviscerate the careful balance that

Congress struck when enacting RICO.3 Again, most

personal-injury torts lead to damages involving a loss of

employment or income (such as lost wages) or loss of money

(such as medical expenses). Horn characterizes those

damages as lost business or lost property. So if Horn’s

argument were accepted and RICO’s exclusion of personal

injuries did not actually exclude most personal-injury tort

suits, then RICO would suddenly authorize a vast new

category of personal-injury suits seeking treble damages in

federal court. For example, plaintiffs could easily plead

everyday product liability claims as federal RICO claims, at

least so long as there were two or more instances of fraud

that a plaintiff could cast as a “pattern” of racketeering

activity. 18 U. S. C. §1961(5); see Brief for Petitioners 25–

29; Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of

America et al. as Amici Curiae 19–21.

Most state tort suits are personal-injury suits. And the

States assume an especially active role regarding the rules

of personal-injury cases, exercising their “traditional

authority to regulate tort actions.” Wos v. E. M. A., 568

U. S. 627, 639 (2013).

Interpreting civil RICO to allow plaintiffs to bypass those

state-law limits—and to triple their damages in federal

court—would supplant vast “areas of traditional state

responsibility.” Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 858

——————

3 RICO authorizes both criminal prosecutions and civil actions by the

Government regardless of whether there has been any business or

property injury. See 18 U. S. C. §§1963(a), 1964(a)–(b). But Congress

deliberately made a different choice for private suits, “cabining RICO’s

private cause of action to particular kinds of injury.” RJR Nabisco, Inc.

v. European Community, 579 U. S. 325, 350 (2016).

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 13

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

(2014). In the antitrust context, this Court has emphasized

that the “maintenance in our federal system of a proper

distribution between state and national governments” is “of

far-reaching importance,” and an “intention to disturb the

balance is not lightly to be imputed to Congress.” Hunt v.

Crumboch, 325 U. S. 821, 826 (1945) (quotation marks

omitted).

So too with RICO. Indeed, the federalism concerns are

even greater with RICO than with antitrust. Few antitrust

violations are likely to inflict personal injury on a

plaintiff—anticompetitive acts break laws, not legs. But

“the breadth of the predicate offenses” in RICO practically

covers the waterfront of personal-injury tort law. Sedima,

S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U. S. 479, 500 (1985). So if

RICO were interpreted as Horn suggests, RICO suits for

treble damages in federal court could supplant many

everyday tort suits in state court. Avoiding such seismic

shifts in the federal-state balance, Congress drew the

critical RICO boundary at issue here—“cabining RICO’s

private cause of action to particular kinds of injury” and

“excluding” “personal injuries.” RJR Nabisco, 579 U. S., at

350.

II

To sum up so far: When civil RICO employed the

language “injured in his business or property,” it broke no

new ground. It incorporated well-established tort-law

principles and antitrust precedents in a straightforward

way. If the only injury (that is, invasion of a legal right)

that a plaintiff suffers is a personal injury, the plaintiff

cannot recover under civil RICO. And RICO does not allow

access to its treble-damages remedy by silently green-

lighting personal-injury suits that have downstream

financial consequences like lost wages or medical expenses.

After all, most personal injuries generate those

downstream financial consequences. So if RICO were

14 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

interpreted in that way, it would federalize significant

swaths of state tort law, and substantially alter the federal-

state balance.

Despite all of that, the Court today agrees in part (with

some important caveats as discussed below) with plaintiff

Horn on this basic statutory issue and thereby circumvents

RICO’s exclusion of personal injuries—letting in through

the back door at least some of the personal-injury suits that

RICO’s text bars at the threshold.

The Court’s key mistake, in my view, is to employ an

ordinary-meaning definition of the term “injured” rather

than its longstanding meaning as a term of art in American

tort law. As the Court sees it, the ordinary meaning of

“injured” simply is to have suffered harm or losses or

damages. Therefore, when a personal injury leads to harm

or losses or damages related to one’s business or property,

those downstream harms to business or property are

actually their own distinct business or property injuries for

purposes of RICO. So under that reasoning, many

personal-injury suits seeking treble damages can in fact be

brought under RICO in federal court. Voila.

A

To navigate around RICO’s distinction between personal-

injury suits and business- or property-injury suits, and the

key point that injury is a longstanding tort-law term of art,

the Court stresses that RICO uses the term “injured”

instead of “injury.” That single piece of “context,” says the

Court, means that we should look to the ordinary meaning

of “injured” and that the traditional tort-law understanding

of injury does not carry over to RICO. Ante, at 7–8. I am

mystified by the Court’s attempt to hang its analytical hat

on such a thin distinction between “injured” and “injury.”

After all, a person “injured” is a person who has suffered an

“[i]njury,” a “violation of a legal right”—that is, the victim

of a tort or wrong. Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co.,

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 15

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

260 U. S. 156, 163 (1922) (quotation marks omitted); see,

e.g., Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203

U. S. 390, 398–399 (1906); Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U. S. 120,

130 (2017); Alabama Power Co. v. Ickes, 302 U. S. 464, 479

(1938); Taylor v. Carryl, 20 How. 583, 599 (1858).

After reviewing a single dictionary definition of “injured,”

the Court concludes that the term “injured,” as distinct

from “injury,” has no specialized legal meaning. From

there, the Court says that it “is hard to make a term-of-art

argument without the term of art.” Ante, at 8. But the

Court’s nifty turn of phrase has no substance behind it.

Every one of the Court’s dictionaries—its legal dictionaries,

and even its generalist ones—includes the rights-violation

definition of “injure” or “injured,” not just of “injury.” See

Ballentine’s, at 627 (“injured party”); Black’s, at 924 (to

“injure”); Webster’s New International Dictionary 1111

(1913) (“injured”); American Heritage Dictionary 676 (1969)

(to “injure”); Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

1164 (1971) (“injured”). Those sources do not draw the

distinction that the Court creates in order to avoid RICO’s

exclusion of personal injuries.4

Simply put, the Court’s attempt to find a key difference

between “injured” and “injury” rings hollow. And the

Court’s textual gymnastics do not end there. If the Court

were correct that injured simply means having suffered

harm or losses or damages, then the statutory term

“injured” would refer to the same thing as the statutory

term “damages.” But the statute distinguishes “injured”

from “damages” and makes clear they are not the same

——————

4 Meanwhile, the Court’s cited definition for “injury in his property” is

nearly identical to this Court’s test for “injured in his property” in

antitrust, the part of speech notwithstanding. Compare Ballentine’s, at

627 (“An injury to his property; also the diminishing of his property by a

transfer of property, or a payment of money, induced by fraud”), with

Chattanooga Foundry, 203 U. S., at 396, 398–399 (either “injury to

property” or “a payment of money wrongfully induced”).

16 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

thing. See §1964(c) (“Any person injured in his business or

property by reason of a violation” of RICO “shall recover

threefold the damages he sustains” (emphasis added)). The

text instead makes clear that damages are the losses that a

victim sustains from an injury.

Faced with the problem that its definition of injured

refers to the same thing as damages in this statute, the

Court simply redefines “damages” not to mean losses, but

rather to mean only “monetary redress” to be paid for the

losses. Ante, at 8–9.

The Court is surely correct that “damages” can mean (i)

losses suffered or (ii) monetary redress from a lawsuit for

those losses. In fact, the term “damages” is often used in

both ways. But in this statutory context, only the former

definition—losses—makes any sense. As used in the RICO

statute, “damages” are something that a victim “sustains.”

And the term “sustains” means to “experience or suffer (loss

or injury).” American Heritage, at 1296. A plaintiff cannot

suffer or sustain “monetary redress,” as the Court seems to

think. But he can sustain losses.

So the term “damages” in RICO means losses, but that is

exactly what the Court says the term “injured” means. The

Court affords the same meaning to those different terms.

In this context, that is another clue that the Court’s

analysis of the term “injured” has gone off track.5

——————

5 To be sure, when a plaintiff recovers the damages, he has obtained

“monetary redress.” But that is because of the statutory word “recover.”

Nor is it odd, as the Court seems to think, for a statute to say that a

plaintiff can “recover” his losses or damages. Allowing a plaintiff to

“recover” the “damages” sustained—where “damages” unambiguously

means losses suffered—is a formulation used in countless other statutes

and cases. For example, “[w]hen an owner of a passenger motor vehicle

sustains damages as a result of a motor vehicle accident because the

vehicle did not comply with” certain standards, “the owner may bring a

civil action against the manufacturer to recover the damages.” 49

U. S. C. §32508. If a person “purchase[s] or sell[s] any security at a price

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 17

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

In short, to reach its conclusion that RICO allows

personal-injury suits involving losses or damages to

business or property, the Court reasons that “injured”

means something different from “injury.” And it changes

the statutory definition of “damages” to avoid that word

carrying the same meaning as the Court’s reading of

“injured.” Neither of those efforts is persuasive or

permissible as an interpretation of RICO’s text, in my view.

The correct reading is instead the textually

straightforward one: A person “injured in his business or

property” is a person who has suffered injury in a business

or property right as traditionally defined—the violation of

a legal right in his business or property. Keogh, 260 U. S.,

at 163. Civil RICO allows a person to “recover damages” if

the damages result from a business or property injury, but

not if the damages result from a personal injury. Id., at

162.6

——————

which was affected” by certain manipulation, “the person so injured may

sue . . . to recover the damages sustained as a result of any such act or

transaction.” 15 U. S. C. §78i(f ). And even specifically in antitrust, a

“claimant” means a person bringing a civil action except for a State “with

respect to a civil action brought to recover damages sustained by the

State.” 15 U. S. C. §7a(4). See also, e.g., Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v.

Haber, 169 U. S. 613, 615 (1898) (“object was to recover the damages

sustained by the plaintiff . . . by reason of the defendants having brought

. . . certain cattle alleged to have been” infected with “Spanish fever”);

Tindle v. Birkett, 205 U. S. 183, 184 (1907) (“an action brought in 1899

to recover damages claimed to have been sustained in consequence of

specified false and fraudulent representations”); Great Northern R. Co.

v. Sullivan, 294 U. S. 458, 462 (1935) (“if injured thereby, plaintiff is

entitled to recover the damages sustained in consequence of [the

defendant’s] failure”); Construction Workers v. Laburnum Constr. Corp.,

347 U. S. 656, 666 (1954) (“the recovery of damages caused by tortious

conduct”).

6 In a footnote, the Court apparently also endorses Horn’s fallback

argument: According to the Court, even if “injured” refers to the violation

of a legal right, that is no problem so long as the legal right is the right

“against business or property harms that result from racketeering

18 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

B

The Court also contends that precedent compels us to

read “injured” as meaning “harmed or damaged,” not as a

tort-law term of art meaning invasion of a legal right. Ante,

at 6; see ante, at 9–11. But the Court does not cite any cases

actually holding as much. Instead, the Court offers out-of-

context citations of isolated mentions of “harm” in other

cases.

In relying on passages pulled out of context from judicial

opinions, the Court makes the mistake of parsing “the

language of an opinion” “as though we were dealing with

language of a statute.” Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S.

330, 341 (1979). The Court seizes in particular on the word

“harm,” which is not in the RICO statute. The Court says

that injury simply means harm as ordinarily understood.

So any harm to business or property is its own distinct

business or property injury, the Court says. But that is

wrong as a matter of elementary tort law. As the

Restatement plainly says, “harm, which is merely personal

loss or detriment, gives rise to a cause of action only when

it results from the invasion of a legally protected interest,

which is to say an injury.” Restatement (Second) of Torts

§7, Comment d.7

——————

activity.” Ante, at 7, n. 4; see Brief for Respondent 24. But being

“injured” is an element of the RICO private right of action. If “injured”

means violation of a legal right, then the right being violated cannot be

the right to not suffer from a RICO violation. (That theory would be just

as circular as it sounds.) The rights violations have to be defined

somewhere else—and so they are, by “general common-law” tort

principles of “legal injury.” Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553

U. S. 639, 656 (2008).

7 The Court also cites an extraterritoriality case, Yegiazaryan v.

Smagin, 599 U. S. 533 (2023). But its reading of that case is puzzling.

Yegiazaryan held that we must apply the presumption against

extraterritoriality, rather than a specific rule from the First Restatement

of Conflict of Laws, to determine whether and to what extent RICO

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 19

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

Moreover, contrary to the Court’s telling, multiple civil

RICO precedents confirm that to be “injured” in civil RICO

means to have suffered “legal injury,” not merely to have

suffered harm or loss or damage of some kind. Bridge v.

Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U. S. 639, 656 (2008).

In Bridge, for example, the Court explained that whether

an element is required in order to state a civil RICO claim

turns on whether that element is necessary to show “legally

cognizable injury” under “general common-law

principle[s].” Ibid.8 In Beck v. Prupis, the Court likewise

held that when civil RICO says that anyone “injured” by

reason of a “violation” may sue, it means that a plaintiff

may recover only if “injured” by a “violation” under “well-

established common law” principles. 529 U. S. 494, 500–

501, 506 (2000).9

——————

applies abroad. In other words, rather than any particular conflict-of-

laws rules, RICO incorporates our usual, across-the-board

extraterritoriality test for federal torts—the “presumption against

extraterritoriality, with its distinctive concerns for comity and discerning

congressional meaning.” Id., at 547–548. Nothing about that case

suggests we should not also apply our other usual rule for federal torts—

“the premise that when Congress creates a federal tort it adopts the

background of general tort law.” Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 562 U. S.

411, 417 (2011).

8 The Court quotes Bridge but omits the first part of the sentence.

Bridge held that “predicate acts under RICO” need not be “actionable

under the common law” so long as they are chargeable under RICO’s list

of state or federal crimes. 553 U. S., at 652 (emphasis added and

quotation marks omitted). In other words, the part of Bridge that the

Court quotes says that predicate acts need to be crimes, not torts. But

when it came to determining whether a plaintiff suffered “legal injury”

from those predicate acts, Bridge made clear that what matters is the

“general common-law principle[s]” of tort liability. Id., at 656 (emphasis

added).

9 And on other RICO-related interpretive issues as well, this Court’s

cases have read civil RICO “to incorporate common-law principles.”

Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U. S. 258, 266–

267 (1992) (relying on Associated Gen. Contractors of Cal., Inc. v.

20 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

Those Bridge and Beck precedents directly contradict the

Court’s test today that RICO’s private right of action

“requires nothing more” than that a plaintiff ’s “business or

property has been harmed or damaged.” Ante, at 6. Under

this Court’s precedents, more is certainly required.

Specifically, the plaintiff must have suffered a business or

property injury as those terms are understood under

general tort principles—meaning an invasion of a legal

right in his business or property.

C

The Court further says that distinguishing personal

injuries from business or property injuries, as the text of

RICO requires, would be difficult at times. To be sure, as

with almost everything in the law, there may be close calls

at the margins—here, about whether a plaintiff plausibly

alleges a business or property injury as distinct from a

personal injury. But that inquiry is at least a familiar

judicial exercise. Cf. United States v. Burke, 504 U. S. 229,

239 (1992); see also, e.g., Willard v. Moneta Bldg. Supply,

Inc., 262 Va. 473, 482, 551 S. E. 2d 596, 600 (2001)

(“applicable statute of limitations” turns on “the type of

injury alleged”). And the commonplace reality of some close

calls does not mean that we can or should disregard

Congress’s textual limitation on the kinds of injury that a

plaintiff must allege—and ultimately prove—in order to

recover under RICO.

The Court also focuses incessantly on a scenario where,

as sometimes happens, a single episode results in injuries

both to one’s person and to one’s business or property. Some

kinds of wrongful acts can cause the invasion of multiple

legal rights—for example, a car accident might damage the

car (property injury) and physically harm the driver

——————

Carpenters, 459 U. S. 519, 531–534 (1983)); see also Anza v. Ideal Steel

Supply Corp., 547 U. S. 451, 457 (2006); Hemi Group, LLC v. City of New

York, 559 U. S. 1, 9 (2010).

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 21

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

(personal injury). See generally W. Loyd, Actions Arising

Out of Injury to Both Person and Property, 60 U. Pa. L. Rev.

531 (1912); contra, ante, at 14, n. 9 (resisting dividing

negligence actions along these lines). In those scenarios,

civil RICO allows recovery for the business or property

injury (assuming RICO’s other requirements are met), but

not the personal injury.

I therefore agree with the Court—and so does defendant

Medical Marijuana—that civil RICO allows for recovery

any time a defendant has “invaded the plaintiff ’s business

or property rights,” “even if the plaintiff also suffered a

personal injury.” Brief for Petitioners 34–35; see Reply

Brief 7. As defendant Medical Marijuana acknowledges,

and I too agree, if a defendant’s act causes both personal

and property injuries to another, then civil RICO “allows

suit for the” “property injury” but not the “personal injury,”

no matter which came first. Reply Brief 8.

In other words, neither Medical Marijuana nor I actually

adopt the position the Court today labels as the

“antecedent-personal-injury bar.” Ante, at 4, 14. Under

that supposed bar, RICO would “implicitly” exclude any

business or property injuries whenever they follow a

personal injury. Ante, at 4. But by repeatedly criticizing

that supposed rule, the Court invents and knocks down a

straw man. So just to be crystal clear, I agree with the

Court (as does defendant Medical Marijuana) that if the

plaintiff at some point also suffered a personal injury in

addition to a business or property injury, the plaintiff can

still recover damages for the business or property injury.

Consider the Court’s hypotheticals. They are supposed to

show that the so-called “antecedent-personal-injury bar”

would bar recovery and lead to untenable results in certain

cases. But in almost all of them, the rule that defendant

Medical Marijuana proposes (and I agree with) would allow

recovery, not bar it. Indeed, they are not close calls. Why

does Tony Soprano “injure” a victim in his property by

22 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

extracting a computer password through violence and then

using it to drain a bank account? Because he has committed

at least two traditional wrongs: battery on the password

holder and conversion of the money. Restatement (Second)

of Torts §§13, 222. A mobster who assaults a carwash

owner in order to force him to do business with the mob

“intentionally and improperly interferes” with the owner’s

right to do business with whom he pleases. Id., §§766A,

766B; cf. id., §§766C, 912, Comment d (no business injury

from lost profits after a personal injury “unless the harm to

the business was intended”); contra, ante, at 6. And when

a fraudster or a kidnapper uses deceit or extortion to obtain

money, the victim parts with it because he “has been

defrauded or subjected to duress, or whatever it may be”—

in other words, “injured in his property.” Chattanooga

Foundry, 203 U. S., at 399.

The correct rule therefore remains the one that civil

RICO expressly provides: In a RICO suit, a plaintiff can

recover “damages” from a “business or property” injury, but

not damages from a personal injury.

III

Now, we get to the important juncture where the Court

diverges from plaintiff Horn in terms of what RICO

plaintiffs may recover in personal-injury suits.

Plaintiff Horn seeks a rule that would blatantly

circumvent RICO’s exclusion of personal-injury suits. In

Horn’s world, plaintiffs could routinely bring RICO claims

for personal injuries from drug mislabeling, dangerous

products, medical malpractice, car accidents, and health

consequences from pollution, to name a few. As Horn sees

it, “injured” means to have experienced a loss, and losing

money via lost wages or medical expenses always entails

being “injured” in one’s business or property. See Reiter v.

Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 338 (1979) (“Money, of

course, is a form of property”). Therefore, plaintiffs could

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 23

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

routinely repackage many state personal-injury suits as

RICO suits (so long as the defendant committed two or more

predicate acts) and obtain treble recovery for medical

expenses, lost wages, and other pecuniary losses. The only

kind of damages that Horn would exclude are non-economic

damages like pain and suffering.10

Plaintiff Horn’s approach would dramatically expand

civil RICO and allow plaintiffs to seize on RICO to replace

ordinary state-law tort suits. Plaintiffs could convert, for

example, everyday product liability claims into RICO mass-

tort class actions and multi-district litigation where

plaintiffs might now seek recovery of triple their lost wages

and triple their medical expenses.

Horn’s game-changing rule would likely produce

significant cascading effects on the American economy and

federal and state court systems. American businesses

facing novel RICO suits with treble damages would incur

significantly increased litigation exposure and

corresponding settlement pressure. Their insurance

premiums would rise. And all of those costs would mean

higher prices for consumers, and fewer jobs and lower

wages for workers. In short, the effects of Horn’s rule would

likely be dramatic, as Medical Marijuana and its amici

explain. See Brief for DRI Center for Law and Public Policy

et al. as Amici Curiae 20–22; Brief for Chamber of

Commerce of the United States of America et al. as Amici

Curiae 22–23.

——————

10 Plaintiff Horn says that his rule is consistent with the Ninth

Circuit’s. But in Diaz v. Gates, the Ninth Circuit specifically rejected

conflating “mere loss of something of value (such as wages) with injury

to a property interest (such as the right to earn wages).” 420 F. 3d 897,

900, n. 1 (2005) (en banc). And that court held that the plaintiff ’s harms

could give rise to a RICO claim because they “amount[ed] to intentional

interference with contract and interference with prospective business

relations.” Id., at 900. So the Ninth Circuit’s rule is distinct from the

rules advocated by plaintiff Horn and the Court today, which reject any

reliance on tort law or legal injury.

24 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

Where is the Court on all of this? Having accepted

plaintiff Horn’s basic statutory argument, the Court

declines to accept all the implications of that position.

Instead, the Court stops short and does not (yet) go as far

as Horn would. After agreeing with Horn that RICO does

not exclude what are traditional personal-injury suits, the

Court does not (for now) adopt Horn’s view that lost wages

and medical expenses are “necessarily” recoverable. Ante,

at 18. The Court instead suggests that lost wages (as

distinct from lost profits) may not necessarily be a business

loss, and pecuniary losses such as medical expenses may

not necessarily be a property loss.

It is good that the Court pulls back from the precipice and

does not adopt Horn’s argument in full. In particular, the

Court seems to recognize that it would border on the absurd

to adopt Horn’s position in full and interpret RICO to

federalize (and allow treble damages for) such a large

number of otherwise standard personal-injury tort suits.

But instead of simply interpreting RICO not to authorize

suits for personal injuries, as the statutory text says and as

I would do, the Court still sticks partway with Horn and his

overly broad interpretation of the statutory text. The Court

then backfills to avoid some of the absurd implications of

that position by emphasizing certain statutory limitations

on RICO suits and then leaving other questions

unanswered for now.

For example, the Court stresses that proximate cause is

strictly cabined in the RICO context, requiring a direct

relationship, not mere foreseeability. Ante, at 17; see Hemi

Group, LLC v. City of New York, 559 U. S. 1, 12 (2010); Anza

v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 547 U. S. 451, 457 (2006);

Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503

U. S. 258, 266–267 (1992). The Court helpfully suggests,

moreover, that Horn’s suit will not clear that direct-

relationship bar, saying that it may pose an

“insurmountable obstacle” to Horn’s continuing this suit.

Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 25

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

Ante, at 17. And the Court notes that RICO does not allow

suits for a single tort, but requires a “pattern of

racketeering activity.” Ante, at 18.

I welcome those limits, and I appreciate that they may

mitigate some of the potential consequences of the Court’s

overbroad statutory interpretation.

But the Court then does not answer a significant real-

world question spawned by its expansive statutory

interpretation: Can civil RICO plaintiffs claim lost wages

and medical expenses as business or property injuries?

Lower courts will have to resolve the question that the

Court’s opinion does not answer. All of the above text,

context, and history should counsel against interpreting

RICO to cover classic damages like lost wages and medical

expenses resulting solely from personal injuries. But at

least until the Court squarely holds that lost wages and

medical expenses are not recoverable, the Court’s opinion

will leave a good deal of uncertainty for the lower courts to

address. The Court’s opinion will generate far more

confusion and litigation than simply reading the statute as

written—as the Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits have

done—in light of the basic tort-law principles regarding

injury that Congress incorporated into civil RICO.

The Court says: “You can’t replace something with

nothing.” Ante, at 13. But the Court does not heed its own

admonition. Today, the Court replaces a statutory limit

derived from centuries of tort law with a punt that will

leave substantial confusion and litigation in its wake.

* * *

This case should have been reasonably straightforward.

RICO does not authorize personal-injury suits—period.

That is true even when a personal injury leads to losses

related to one’s business or property, as personal injuries

often do. The Court’s decision to allow personal-injury suits

under RICO is mistaken as a matter of statutory text and

26 MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting

context. And the Court’s failure to decide the lost-wages

and medical-expenses questions will undoubtedly produce

significant confusion and litigation in the lower courts, all

of which is wasteful and unnecessary—and contrary to

Congress’s decision to categorically exclude personal-injury

suits from civil RICO. I respectfully dissent.