Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co.

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2007 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

BRIDGE ET AL. v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

No. 07–210. Argued April 14, 2008—Decided June 9, 2008

Each year the Cook County Treasurer’s Office holds a public auction to

sell its tax liens on delinquent taxpayers’ property. To prevent any

one buyer from obtaining a disproportionate share of the liens, the

county adopted the “Single, Simultaneous Bidder Rule” (Rule), which

requires each buyer to submit bids in its own name, prohibits a buyer

from using “apparent agents, employees, or related entities” to sub-

mit simultaneous bids for the same parcel, and requires a registered

bidder to submit a sworn affidavit affirming its compliance with the

Rule. Petitioners and respondents regularly participate in the tax

sales. Respondents filed suit, alleging that petitioners fraudulently

obtained a disproportionate share of liens by filing false compliance

attestations. As relevant here, they claim that petitioners violated

and conspired to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Or-

ganizations Act (RICO) through a pattern of racketeering activity in-

volving mail fraud, which occurred when petitioners sent property

owners various notices required by Illinois law. The District Court

dismissed the RICO claims for lack of standing, finding that respon-

dents were not protected by the mail fraud statute because they did

not receive the alleged misrepresentations. Reversing, the Seventh

Circuit based standing on the injury respondents suffered when they

lost the chance to obtain more liens, and found that respondents had

sufficiently alleged proximate cause because they were immediately

injured by petitioners’ scheme. The court also rejected petitioners’

argument that respondents are not entitled to relief under RICO be-

cause they had not received, and therefore had not relied on, any

false statements.

Held: A plaintiff asserting a RICO claim predicated on mail fraud need

2 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Syllabus

not show, either as an element of its claim or as a prerequisite to es-

tablishing proximate causation, that it relied on the defendant’s al-

leged misrepresentations. Pp. 6–21.

(a) In 18 U. S. C. §1964(c), RICO provides a private right of action

for treble damages to “[a]ny person injured in his business or prop-

erty by reason of a violation,” as pertinent here, of §1962(c), which

makes it “unlawful for any person employed by or associated with” a

qualifying enterprise “to conduct or participate . . . in the conduct of

such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity,”

including “mail fraud,” §1961(1)(B). Mail fraud, in turn, occurs

whenever a person, “having devised or intending to devise any

scheme or artifice to defraud,” uses the mail “for the purpose of exe-

cuting such scheme or artifice.” §1341. The gravamen of the offense

is the scheme to defraud, and any “ ‘mailing . . . incident to an essen-

tial part of the scheme’ . . . satisfies the mailing element,” Schmuck v.

United States, 489 U. S. 705, 712, even if the mailing “contain[s] no

false information,” id., at 715. Once the relationship among these

statutory provisions is understood, respondents’ theory of the case is

straightforward. Petitioners nonetheless argue that because the al-

leged pattern of racketeering activity is predicated on mail fraud, re-

spondents must show that they relied on petitioners’ fraudulent mis-

representations, which they cannot do because the

misrepresentations were made to the county. Nothing on the stat-

ute’s face imposes such a requirement. Using the mail to execute or

attempt to execute a scheme to defraud is indictable as mail fraud,

and hence a predicate racketeering act under RICO, even if no one re-

lied on any misrepresentation, see Neder v. United States, 527 U. S.

1, 24–25; and one can conduct the affairs of a qualifying enterprise

through a pattern of such acts without anyone relying on a fraudu-

lent misrepresentation. Thus, no reliance showing is required to es-

tablish that a person has violated §1962(c) by conducting an enter-

prise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity predicated

on mail fraud. Nor can a first-party reliance requirement be derived

from §1964(c), which, by providing a right of action to “[a]ny person”

injured by a violation of §1962, suggests a breadth of coverage not

easily reconciled with an implicit first-party reliance requirement.

Moreover, a person can be injured “by reason of” a pattern of mail

fraud even if he has not relied on any misrepresentations. For exam-

ple, accepting respondents’ allegations as true, they were harmed by

petitioners’ scheme when they lost valuable liens they otherwise

would have been awarded. Pp. 6–10.

(b) None of petitioners’ arguments—that under the “common-law

meaning” rule, Congress should be presumed to have made reliance

an element of a civil RICO claim predicated on a violation of the mail

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 3

Syllabus

fraud statute; that a plaintiff bringing a RICO claim based on mail

fraud must show reliance on the defendant’s misrepresentations in

order to establish proximate cause; and that RICO should be inter-

preted to require first-party reliance for fraud-based claims in order

to avoid the “overfederalization” of traditional state-law claims—

persuades this Court to read a first-party reliance requirement into a

statute that by its terms suggests none. Pp. 10–21.

477 F. 3d 928, affirmed.

THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 1

Opinion of the Court

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

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-

ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 07–210

_________________

JOHN BRIDGE, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. PHOENIX

BOND & INDEMNITY CO. ET AL.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

[June 9, 2008]

JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations

Act (RICO or Act), 18 U. S. C. §§1961–1968, provides a

private right of action for treble damages to “[a]ny person

injured in his business or property by reason of a viola-

tion” of the Act’s criminal prohibitions. §1964(c). The

question presented in this case is whether a plaintiff

asserting a RICO claim predicated on mail fraud must

plead and prove that it relied on the defendant’s alleged

misrepresentations. Because we agree with the Court of

Appeals that a showing of first-party reliance is not re-

quired, we affirm.

I

Each year the Cook County, Illinois, Treasurer’s Office

holds a public auction at which it sells tax liens it has

acquired on the property of delinquent taxpayers.1 Pro-

——————

1 Because this case arises from the District Court’s grant of petition-

ers’ motion to dismiss, we “accept as true all of the factual allegations

contained in [respondents’] complaint.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U. S.

___, ___ (2007) (per curiam) (slip op., at 5).

2 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

spective buyers bid on the liens, but not in cash amounts.

Instead, the bids are stated as percentage penalties the

property owner must pay the winning bidder in order to

clear the lien. The bidder willing to accept the lowest

penalty wins the auction and obtains the right to purchase

the lien in exchange for paying the outstanding taxes on

the property. The property owner may then redeem the

property by paying the lienholder the delinquent taxes,

plus the penalty established at the auction and an addi-

tional 12% penalty on any taxes subsequently paid by the

lienholder. If the property owner does not redeem the

property within the statutory redemption period, the

lienholder may obtain a tax deed for the property, thereby

in effect purchasing the property for the value of the de-

linquent taxes.

Because property acquired in this manner can often be

sold at a significant profit over the amount paid for the

lien, the auctions are marked by stiff competition. As a

result, most parcels attract multiple bidders willing to

accept the lowest penalty permissible—0%, that is to say,

no penalty at all. (Perhaps to prevent the perverse incen-

tive taxpayers would have if they could redeem their

property from a winning bidder for less than the amount

of their unpaid taxes, the county does not accept negative

bids.) The lower limit of 0% creates a problem: Who wins

when the bidding results in a tie? The county’s solution is

to allocate parcels “on a rotational basis” in order to en-

sure that liens are apportioned fairly among 0% bidders.

App. 18.

But this creates a perverse incentive of its own: Bidders

who, in addition to bidding themselves, send agents to bid

on their behalf will obtain a disproportionate share of

liens. To prevent this kind of manipulation, the county

adopted the “Single, Simultaneous Bidder Rule,” which

requires each “tax buying entity” to submit bids in its own

name and prohibits it from using “apparent agents, em-

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 3

Opinion of the Court

ployees, or related entities” to submit simultaneous bids

for the same parcel.2 App. 67. Upon registering for an

auction, each bidder must submit a sworn affidavit affirm-

ing that it complies with the Single, Simultaneous Bidder

Rule.

Petitioners and respondents are regular participants in

Cook County’s tax sales. In July 2005, respondents filed a

complaint in the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, contending that petitioners

had fraudulently obtained a disproportionate share of

liens by violating the Single, Simultaneous Bidder Rule at

the auctions held from 2002 to 2005. According to respon-

dents, petitioner Sabre Group, LLC, and its principal

Barrett Rochman arranged for related firms to bid on

Sabre Group’s behalf and directed them to file false attes-

tations that they complied with the Single, Simultaneous

Bidder Rule. Having thus fraudulently obtained the

opportunity to participate in the auction, the related firms

collusively bid on the same properties at a 0% rate. As a

result, when the county allocated liens on a rotating ba-

sis,3 it treated the related firms as independent entities,

——————

2 The Single, Simultaneous Bidder Rule provides that “one tax buying

entity (principal) may not have its/his/her/their actual or apparent

agents, employees, or related entities, directly or indirectly register

under multiple registrations for the intended or perceived purpose of

having more than one person bidding at the tax sale at the same time

for the intended or perceived purpose of increasing the principal’s

likelihood of obtaining a successful bid on a parcel.” App. 67. The rule

defines “Related Bidding Entity” as “any individual, corporation,

partnership, joint venture, limited liability company, business organi-

zation, or other entity that has a shareholder, partner, principal,

officer, general partner or other person or entity having an ownership

interest in common with, or contractual relationship with, any other

registrant.” Ibid. It further provides that “[t]he determination of

whether registered entities are related, so as to prevent the entities

from bidding at the same time, is in the sole and exclusive discretion of

the Cook County Treasurer or her designated representatives.” Ibid.

3 Respondents’ complaint does not elaborate on the county’s rotational

4 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

allowing them collectively to acquire a greater number of

liens than would have been granted to a single bidder

acting alone. The related firms then purchased the liens

and transferred the certificates of purchase to Sabre

Group. In this way, respondents allege, petitioners de-

prived them and other bidders of their fair share of liens

and the attendant financial benefits.

Respondents’ complaint contains five counts. Counts I–

IV allege that petitioners violated and conspired to violate

RICO by conducting their affairs through a pattern of

racketeering activity involving numerous acts of mail

fraud. In support of their allegations of mail fraud, re-

spondents assert that petitioners “mailed or caused to be

mailed hundreds of mailings in furtherance of the

scheme,” App. 49, when they sent property owners various

notices required by Illinois law. Count V alleges a state-

law claim of tortious interference with prospective busi-

ness advantage.

On petitioners’ motion, the District Court dismissed

respondents’ RICO claims for lack of standing. It observed

that “[o]nly [respondents] and other competing buyers, as

opposed to the Treasurer or the property owners, would

——————

system. The Court of Appeals described it as follows: “If X bids 0% on

ten parcels, and each parcel attracts five bids at that penalty rate, then

the County awards X two of the ten parcels. Winners share according

to the ratio of their bids to other identical bids.” 477 F. 3d 928, 929

(CA7 2007). Petitioners object that this description is not supported by

the record and inappropriately “inject[s] into the case an element of

mathematical certainty that is missing from the complaint itself.”

Reply Brief for Petitioners 20. While a precise understanding of the

county’s system may be necessary to calculate respondents’ damages,

nothing in our disposition turns on this issue. For present purposes, it

suffices that respondents allege they “suffered the loss of property

related to the liens they would have been able to acquire, and the

profits flowing therefrom, had [petitioners] not implemented their

scheme and acquired liens in excess of their appropriate share through

their violation of the County Rule.” App. 50.

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 5

Opinion of the Court

suffer a financial loss from a scheme to violate the Single,

Simultaneous Bidder Rule.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 17a.

But it concluded that respondents “are not in the class of

individuals protected by the mail fraud statute, and there-

fore are not within the ‘zone of interests’ that the RICO

statute protects,” because they “were not recipients of the

alleged misrepresentations and, at best were indirect

victims of the alleged fraud.” Id., at 18a. The District

Court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over

respondents’ tortious-interference claim and dismissed it

without prejudice.

The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed.

It first concluded that “[s]tanding is not a problem in this

suit” because plaintiffs suffered a “real injury” when they

lost the valuable chance to acquire more liens, and be-

cause “that injury can be redressed by damages.” 477

F. 3d 928, 930 (2007). The Court of Appeals next con-

cluded that respondents had sufficiently alleged proximate

cause under Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Cor-

poration, 503 U. S. 258 (1992), and Anza v. Ideal Steel

Supply Corp., 547 U. S. 451 (2006), because they (along

with other losing bidders) were “immediately injured” by

petitioners’ scheme. 477 F. 3d, at 930–932. Finally, the

Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ argument that re-

spondents are not entitled to relief under RICO because

they did not receive, and therefore did not rely on, any

false statements: “A scheme that injures D by making

false statements through the mail to E is mail fraud, and

actionable by D through RICO if the injury is not deriva-

tive of someone else’s.” Id., at 932.

With respect to this last holding, the Court of Appeals

acknowledged that courts have taken conflicting views.

By its count, “[t]hree other circuits that have considered

this question agree . . . that the direct victim may recover

through RICO whether or not it is the direct recipient of

the false statements,” ibid. (citing Mid Atlantic Telecom,

6 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

Inc. v. Long Distance Servs., Inc., 18 F. 3d 260, 263–264

(CA4 1994); Systems Management, Inc. v. Loiselle, 303

F. 3d 100, 103–104 (CA1 2002); Ideal Steel Supply Corp. v.

Anza, 373 F. 3d 251, 263 (CA2 2004)), whereas two Cir-

cuits hold that the plaintiff must show that it in fact relied

on the defendant’s misrepresentations, 477 F. 3d, at 932

(citing VanDenBroeck v. CommonPoint Mortgage Co., 210

F. 3d 696, 701 (CA6 2000); Sikes v. Teleline, Inc., 281 F. 3d

1350, 1360–1361 (CA11 2002)). Compare also Sandwich

Chef of Texas, Inc. v. Reliance Nat’l Indemnity Ins. Co.,

319 F. 3d 205, 223 (CA5 2003) (recognizing “a narrow

exception to the requirement that the plaintiff prove direct

reliance on the defendant’s fraudulent predicate act . . .

when the plaintiff can demonstrate injury as a direct and

contemporaneous result of a fraud committed against a

third party”), with Appletree Square I, L. P. v. W. R. Grace

& Co., 29 F. 3d 1283, 1286–1287 (CA8 1994) (requiring the

plaintiff to show that it detrimentally relied on the defen-

dant’s misrepresentations).

We granted certiorari, 552 U. S. ___ (2008), to resolve

the conflict among the Courts of Appeals on “the substan-

tial question,” Anza, 547 U. S., at 461, whether first-party

reliance is an element of a civil RICO claim predicated on

mail fraud.4

II

We begin by setting forth the applicable statutory provi-

sions. RICO’s private right of action is contained in 18

U. S. C. §1964(c), which provides in relevant part that

——————

4 TheCourt considered a civil RICO claim predicated on mail fraud in

its recent decision in Anza, 547 U. S. 451. There the Court held that

proximate cause is a condition of recovery under 18 U. S. C. §1962(c).

The Court did not address the question whether reliance by the plain-

tiff is a required element of a RICO claim, the matter now before us.

Cf. 547 U. S., at 475–478 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissenting

in part) (reaching the question and concluding that reliance is not an

element of a civil RICO claim based on mail fraud).

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 7

Opinion of the Court

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

of a violation of section 1962 of this chapter may sue there-

for in any appropriate United States district court and

shall recover threefold the damages he sustains and the

cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.”

Section 1962 contains RICO’s criminal prohibitions.

Pertinent here is §1962(c), which makes it “unlawful for

any person employed by or associated with” an enterprise

engaged in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce “to

conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the con-

duct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of rack-

eteering activity.” The term “racketeering activity” is

defined to include a host of so-called predicate acts, includ-

ing “any act which is indictable under . . . section 1341

(relating to mail fraud).” §1961(1)(B).

The upshot is that RICO provides a private right of

action for treble damages to any person injured in his

business or property by reason of the conduct of a qualify-

ing enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of acts indictable

as mail fraud. Mail fraud, in turn, occurs whenever a

person, “having devised or intending to devise any scheme

or artifice to defraud,” uses the mail “for the purpose of

executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do.”

§1341. The gravamen of the offense is the scheme to

defraud, and any “mailing that is incident to an essential

part of the scheme satisfies the mailing element,”

Schmuck v. United States, 489 U. S. 705, 712 (1989) (cita-

tion and internal quotation marks omitted), even if the

mailing itself “contain[s] no false information,” id., at 715.

Once the relationship among these statutory provisions

is understood, respondents’ theory of the case is straight-

forward. They allege that petitioners devised a scheme to

defraud when they agreed to submit false attestations of

compliance with the Single, Simultaneous Bidder Rule to

the county. In furtherance of this scheme, petitioners

used the mail on numerous occasions to send the requisite

8 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

notices to property owners. Each of these mailings was an

“act which is indictable” as mail fraud, and together they

constituted a “pattern of racketeering activity.” By con-

ducting the affairs of their enterprise through this pattern

of racketeering activity, petitioners violated §1962(c). As a

result, respondents lost the opportunity to acquire valu-

able liens. Accordingly, respondents were injured in their

business or property by reason of petitioners’ violation of

§1962(c), and RICO’s plain terms give them a private right

of action for treble damages.

Petitioners argue, however, that because the alleged

pattern of racketeering activity consisted of acts of mail

fraud, respondents must show that they relied on petition-

ers’ fraudulent misrepresentations. This they cannot do,

because the alleged misrepresentations—petitioners’

attestations of compliance with the Single, Simultaneous

Bidder Rule—were made to the county, not respondents.

The county may well have relied on petitioners’ misrepre-

sentations when it permitted them to participate in the

auction, but respondents, never having received the mis-

representations, could not have done so. Indeed, respon-

dents do not even allege that they relied on petitioners’

false attestations. Thus, petitioners submit, they fail to

state a claim under RICO.

If petitioners’ proposed requirement of first-party reli-

ance seems to come out of nowhere, there is a reason:

Nothing on the face of the relevant statutory provisions

imposes such a requirement. Using the mail to execute or

attempt to execute a scheme to defraud is indictable as

mail fraud, and hence a predicate act of racketeering

under RICO, even if no one relied on any misrepresenta-

tion. See Neder v. United States, 527 U. S. 1, 24–25 (1999)

(“The common-law requiremen[t] of ‘justifiable reliance’

. . . plainly ha[s] no place in the [mail, wire, or bank] fraud

statutes”). And one can conduct the affairs of a qualifying

enterprise through a pattern of such acts without anyone

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 9

Opinion of the Court

relying on a fraudulent misrepresentation.

It thus seems plain—and indeed petitioners do not

dispute—that no showing of reliance is required to estab-

lish that a person has violated §1962(c) by conducting the

affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering

activity consisting of acts of mail fraud. See Anza, 547

U. S., at 476 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissent-

ing in part) (“Because an individual can commit an indict-

able act of mail or wire fraud even if no one relies on his

fraud, he can engage in a pattern of racketeering activity,

in violation of §1962, without proof of reliance”). If reli-

ance is required, then, it must be by virtue of §1964(c),

which provides the right of action. But it is difficult to

derive a first-party reliance requirement from §1964(c),

which states simply that “[a]ny person injured in his

business or property by reason of a violation of section

1962” may sue for treble damages. The statute provides a

right of action to “[a]ny person” injured by the violation,

suggesting a breadth of coverage not easily reconciled with

an implicit requirement that the plaintiff show reliance in

addition to injury in his business or property.

Moreover, a person can be injured “by reason of” a pat-

tern of mail fraud even if he has not relied on any misrep-

resentations. This is a case in point. Accepting their

allegations as true, respondents clearly were injured by

petitioners’ scheme: As a result of petitioners’ fraud, re-

spondents lost valuable liens they otherwise would have

been awarded. And this is true even though they did not

rely on petitioners’ false attestations of compliance with

the county’s rules. Or, to take another example, suppose

an enterprise that wants to get rid of rival businesses

mails misrepresentations about them to their customers

and suppliers, but not to the rivals themselves. If the

rival businesses lose money as a result of the misrepresen-

tations, it would certainly seem that they were injured in

their business “by reason of” a pattern of mail fraud, even

10 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

though they never received, and therefore never relied on,

the fraudulent mailings. Yet petitioners concede that, on

their reading of §1964(c), the rival businesses would have

no cause of action under RICO, Tr. of Oral Arg. 4, even

though they were the primary and intended victims of the

scheme to defraud.

Lacking textual support for this counterintuitive posi-

tion, petitioners rely instead on a combination of common-

law rules and policy arguments in an effort to show that

Congress should be presumed to have made first-party

reliance an element of a civil RICO claim based on mail

fraud. None of petitioners’ arguments persuades us to

read a first-party reliance requirement into a statute that

by its terms suggests none.

III

A

Petitioners first argue that RICO should be read to

incorporate a first-party reliance requirement in fraud

cases “under the rule that Congress intends to incorporate

the well-settled meaning of the common-law terms it

uses.” Neder, supra, at 23. It has long been settled, they

contend, that only the recipient of a fraudulent misrepre-

sentation may recover for common-law fraud, and that he

may do so “if, but only if . . . he relies on the misrepresen-

tation in acting or refraining from action.” Restatement

(Second) of Torts §537 (1977). Given this background rule

of common law, petitioners maintain, Congress should be

presumed to have adopted a first-party reliance require-

ment when it created a civil cause of action under RICO

for victims of mail fraud.

In support of this argument, petitioners point to our

decision in Beck v. Prupis, 529 U. S. 494 (2000). There, we

considered the scope of RICO’s private right of action for

violations of §1962(d), which makes it “unlawful for any

person to conspire to violate” RICO’s criminal prohibitions.

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 11

Opinion of the Court

The question presented was “whether a person injured by

an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy may assert a

civil RICO conspiracy claim under §1964(c) for a violation

of §1962(d) even if the overt act does not constitute ‘rack-

eteering activity.’ ” Id., at 500. Answering this question in

the negative, we held that “injury caused by an overt act

that is not an act of racketeering or otherwise wrongful

under RICO is not sufficient to give rise to a cause of

action under §1964(c) for a violation of §1962(d).” Id., at

505 (citation omitted). In so doing, we “turn[ed] to the

well-established common law of civil conspiracy.” Id., at

500. Because it was “widely accepted” by the time of

RICO’s enactment “that a plaintiff could bring suit for civil

conspiracy only if he had been injured by an act that was

itself tortious,” id., at 501, we presumed “that when Con-

gress established in RICO a civil cause of action for a

person ‘injured . . . by reason of’ a ‘conspir[acy],’ it meant

to adopt these well-established common-law civil conspir-

acy principles.” Id., at 504 (quoting §§1964(c), 1962(d);

alterations in original). We specifically declined to rely on

the law of criminal conspiracy, relying instead on the law

of civil conspiracy:

“We have turned to the common law of criminal con-

spiracy to define what constitutes a violation of

§1962(d), see Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52,

63–65 (1997), a mere violation being all that is neces-

sary for criminal liability. This case, however, does

not present simply the question of what constitutes a

violation of §1962(d), but rather the meaning of a civil

cause of action for private injury by reason of such a

violation. In other words, our task is to interpret

§§1964(c) and 1962(d) in conjunction, rather than

§1962(d) standing alone. The obvious source in the

common law for the combined meaning of these provi-

sions is the law of civil conspiracy.” Id., at 501, n. 6.

12 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

Petitioners argue that, as in Beck, we should look to the

common-law meaning of civil fraud in order to give content

to the civil cause of action §1964(c) provides for private

injury by reason of a violation of §1962(c) based on a pat-

tern of mail fraud. The analogy to Beck, however, is mis-

placed. The critical difference between Beck and this case

is that in §1962(d) Congress used a term—“conspir[acy]”—

that had a settled common-law meaning, whereas Con-

gress included no such term in §1962(c). Section 1962(c)

does not use the term “fraud”; nor does the operative

language of §1961(1)(B), which defines “racketeering

activity” to include “any act which is indictable under . . .

section 1341.” And the indictable act under §1341 is not

the fraudulent misrepresentation, but rather the use of

the mails with the purpose of executing or attempting to

execute a scheme to defraud. In short, the key term in

§1962(c)—“racketeering activity”—is a defined term, and

Congress defined the predicate act not as fraud simplic-

iter, but mail fraud—a statutory offense unknown to the

common law. In these circumstances, the presumption

that Congress intends to adopt the settled meaning of

common-law terms has little pull. Cf. Stoneridge Invest-

ment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., 552 U. S.

___, ___ (2008) (slip op., at 11) (rejecting the argument

that §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15

U. S. C. §78j(b), incorporates common-law fraud). There is

simply no “reason to believe that Congress would have

defined ‘racketeering activity’ to include acts indictable

under the mail and wire fraud statutes, if it intended

fraud-related acts to be predicate acts under RICO only

when those acts would have been actionable under the

common law.” Anza, 547 U. S., at 477–478 (THOMAS, J.,

concurring in part and dissenting in part).

Nor does it help petitioners’ cause that here, as in Beck,

the question is not simply “what constitutes a violation of

§1962[(c)], but rather the meaning of a civil cause of action

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 13

Opinion of the Court

for private injury by reason of such a violation.” 529 U. S.,

at 501, n. 6. To be sure, Beck held that a plaintiff cannot

state a civil claim for conspiracy under §1964(c) merely by

showing a violation of §1962(d) and a resulting injury.

But in so doing, Beck relied not only on the fact that the

term “conspiracy” had a settled common-law meaning, but

also on the well-established common-law understanding of

what it means to be injured by a conspiracy for purposes of

bringing a civil claim for damages. See id., at 501–504.

No comparable understanding exists with respect to injury

caused by an enterprise conducting its affairs through a

pattern of acts indictable as mail fraud. And even the

common-law understanding of injury caused by fraud does

not support petitioners’ argument. As discussed infra, at

16–17, the common law has long recognized that plaintiffs

can recover in a variety of circumstances where, as here,

their injuries result directly from the defendant’s fraudu-

lent misrepresentations to a third party.

For these reasons, we reject petitioners’ contention that

the “common-law meaning” rule dictates that reliance by

the plaintiff is an element of a civil RICO claim predicated

on a violation of the mail fraud statute. Congress chose to

make mail fraud, not common-law fraud, the predicate act

for a RICO violation. And “the mere fact that the predi-

cate acts underlying a particular RICO violation happen to

be fraud offenses does not mean that reliance, an element

of common-law fraud, is also incorporated as an element of

a civil RICO claim.” Anza, supra, at 476 (THOMAS, J.,

concurring in part and dissenting in part).

B

Petitioners next argue that even if Congress did not

make first-party reliance an element of a RICO claim

predicated on mail fraud, a plaintiff who brings such a

claim must show that it relied on the defendant’s misrep-

resentations in order to establish the requisite element of

14 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

causation. In Holmes, we recognized that §1964(c)’s “lan-

guage can, of course, be read to mean that a plaintiff is

injured ‘by reason of’ a RICO violation, and therefore may

recover, simply on showing that the defendant violated

§1962, the plaintiff was injured, and the defendant’s viola-

tion was a ‘but for’ cause of plaintiff’s injury.” 503 U. S., at

265–266 (footnote omitted). We nonetheless held that not

“all factually injured plaintiffs” may recover under

§1964(c). Id., at 266. Because Congress modeled §1964(c)

on other provisions that had been interpreted to “requir[e]

a showing that the defendant’s violation not only was a

‘but for’ cause of his injury, but was the proximate cause

as well,” we concluded that §1964(c) likewise requires the

plaintiff to establish proximate cause in order to show

injury “by reason of” a RICO violation. Id., at 268.

Proximate cause, we explained, is a flexible concept that

does not lend itself to “ ‘a black-letter rule that will dictate

the result in every case.’ ” Id., at 272, n. 20 (quoting Asso-

ciated Gen. Contractors of Cal., Inc. v. Carpenters, 459

U. S. 519, 536 (1983)). Instead, we “use[d] ‘proximate

cause’ to label generically the judicial tools used to limit a

person’s responsibility for the consequences of that per-

son’s own acts,” Holmes, 503 U. S., at 268, with a particu-

lar emphasis on the “demand for some direct relation

between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct

alleged,” ibid.; see also Anza, supra, at 461 (“When a court

evaluates a RICO claim for proximate causation, the

central question it must ask is whether the alleged viola-

tion led directly to the plaintiff’s injuries”). The direct-

relation requirement avoids the difficulties associated

with attempting “to ascertain the amount of a plaintiff’s

damages attributable to the violation, as distinct from

other, independent, factors,” Holmes, 503 U. S., at 269;

prevents courts from having “to adopt complicated rules of

apportioning damages among plaintiffs removed at differ-

ent levels of injury from the violative acts, to obviate the

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 15

Opinion of the Court

risk of multiple recoveries,” ibid.; and recognizes the fact

that “directly injured victims can generally be counted on

to vindicate the law as private attorneys general, without

any of the problems attendant upon suits by plaintiffs

injured more remotely,” id., at 269–270.5

Pointing to our reliance on common-law proximate-

causation principles in Holmes and Anza, petitioners

argue that “[u]nder well-settled common-law principles,

proximate cause is established for fraud claims only where

the plaintiff can demonstrate that he relied on the misrep-

resentation.” Brief for Petitioners 28. In support of this

argument, petitioners cite Restatement (Second) of Torts

§548A, which provides that “[a] fraudulent misrepresenta-

tion is a legal cause of a pecuniary loss resulting from

action or inaction in reliance upon it if, but only if, the loss

might reasonably be expected to result from the reliance.”

Thus, petitioners conclude, “a plaintiff asserting a civil

RICO claim predicated on mail fraud cannot satisfy the

proximate cause requirement unless he can establish that

his injuries resulted from his reliance on the defendant’s

fraudulent misrepresentation.” Brief for Petitioners 28.

Petitioners’ argument is twice flawed. First, as ex-

plained above, the predicate act here is not common-law

fraud, but mail fraud. Having rejected petitioners’ argu-

ment that reliance is an element of a civil RICO claim

based on mail fraud, we see no reason to let that argument

in through the back door by holding that the proximate-

——————

5 Applying these principles in Holmes, the Court held that the Securi-

ties Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) could not recover for

injuries caused by a stock-manipulation scheme that prevented two

broker-dealers from meeting obligations to their customers, thereby

triggering SIPC’s duty to reimburse the customers. 503 U. S., at 270–

274. And in Anza, the Court applied the principles of Holmes to pre-

clude a company from recovering profits it allegedly lost when a rival

business was able to lower its prices because it failed to charge the

requisite sales tax on cash sales. 547 U. S., at 456–461.

16 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

cause analysis under RICO must precisely track the

proximate-cause analysis of a common-law fraud claim.

“Reliance is not a general limitation on civil recovery in

tort; it ‘is a specialized condition that happens to have

grown up with common law fraud.’ ” Anza, 547 U. S., at

477 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in

part) (quoting Systems Management, 303 F. 3d, at 104).

That “specialized condition,” whether characterized as an

element of the claim or as a prerequisite to establishing

proximate causation, simply has no place in a remedial

scheme keyed to the commission of mail fraud, a statutory

offense that is distinct from common-law fraud and that

does not require proof of reliance.

Second, while it may be that first-party reliance is an

element of a common-law fraud claim, there is no general

common-law principle holding that a fraudulent misrepre-

sentation can cause legal injury only to those who rely on

it. The Restatement provision cited by petitioners cer-

tainly does not support that proposition. It provides only

that the plaintiff’s loss must be a foreseeable result of

someone’s reliance on the misrepresentation.6 It does not

say that only those who rely on the misrepresentation can

suffer a legally cognizable injury. And any such notion

would be contradicted by the long line of cases in which

courts have permitted a plaintiff directly injured by a

fraudulent misrepresentation to recover even though it

was a third party, and not the plaintiff, who relied on the

——————

6 In addition to Restatement (Second) of Torts §548A (1977), petition-

ers cite Comment a to that section, which provides that “[c]ausation, in

relation to losses incurred by reason of a misrepresentation, is a matter

of the recipient’s reliance in fact upon the misrepresentation in taking

some action or in refraining from it.” Like §548A itself, however, the

comment does not support petitioners’ argument. Of course, a misrep-

resentation can cause harm only if a recipient of the misrepresentation

relies on it. But that does not mean that the only injuries proximately

caused by the misrepresentation are those suffered by the recipient.

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 17

Opinion of the Court

defendant’s misrepresentation.7 Indeed, so well estab-

lished is the defendant’s liability in such circumstances

that the Restatement (Second) of Torts sets forth as a

“[g]eneral [p]rinciple” that “[o]ne who intentionally causes

injury to another is subject to liability to the other for that

injury, if his conduct is generally culpable and not justifi-

able under the circumstances.” §870. As an illustration,

the Restatement provides the example of a defendant who

“seeks to promote his own interests by telling a known

falsehood to or about the plaintiff or his product.” Id.,

Comment h (emphasis added). And the Restatement

specifically recognizes “a cause of action” in favor of the

injured party where the defendant “defrauds another for

the purpose of causing pecuniary harm to a third person.”

Id., §435A, Comment a. Petitioners’ contention that

proximate cause has traditionally incorporated a first-

party reliance requirement for claims based on fraud

——————

7 Such cases include Rice v. Manley, 66 N. Y. 82 (1876) (permitting

plaintiffs who had arranged to buy a large quantity of cheese to recover

against a defendant who induced the vendor to sell him the cheese by

falsely representing to the vendor that plaintiffs no longer wished to

purchase it); and Gregory v. Brooks, 35 Conn. 437 (1868) (permitting

plaintiff wharf owner to recover against a defendant who, in order to

deprive plaintiff of business, misrepresented himself to be a superin-

tendent of wharves and ordered a vessel unloading at plaintiff’s wharf

to leave); see also Brief for Respondents 26–29 (collecting cases).

Petitioners argue that these cases are irrelevant because they

would be treated today as specialized torts, such as wrongful interfer-

ence with contractual relations, rather than as common-law fraud. See,

e.g., Restatement (Second) of Torts §767, Comment c (recognizing that

“one [may be] liable to another for intentional interference with eco-

nomic relations by inducing a third person by fraudulent misrepresen-

tation not to do business with the other”). But petitioners miss the

point. The cases are not cited as evidence that common-law fraud can

be established without showing first-party reliance. Rather, they—

along with the Restatement’s recognition of specialized torts based on

third-party reliance—show that a fraudulent misrepresentation can

proximately cause actionable injury even to those who do not rely on

the misrepresentation.

18 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

cannot be reconciled with these authorities.

Nor is first-party reliance necessary to ensure that there

is a sufficiently direct relationship between the defen-

dant’s wrongful conduct and the plaintiff’s injury to satisfy

the proximate-cause principles articulated in Holmes and

Anza. Again, this is a case in point. Respondents’ alleged

injury—the loss of valuable liens—is the direct result of

petitioners’ fraud. It was a foreseeable and natural conse-

quence of petitioners’ scheme to obtain more liens for

themselves that other bidders would obtain fewer liens.

And here, unlike in Holmes and Anza, there are no inde-

pendent factors that account for respondents’ injury, there

is no risk of duplicative recoveries by plaintiffs removed at

different levels of injury from the violation, and no more

immediate victim is better situated to sue. Indeed, both

the District Court and the Court of Appeals concluded that

respondents and other losing bidders were the only parties

injured by petitioners’ misrepresentations. App. to Pet. for

Cert. 17a; 477 F. 3d, at 931. Petitioners quibble with that

conclusion, asserting that the county would be injured too

if the taint of fraud deterred potential bidders from par-

ticipating in the auction. But that eventuality, in contrast

to respondents’ direct financial injury, seems speculative

and remote.

Of course, none of this is to say that a RICO plaintiff

who alleges injury “by reason of” a pattern of mail fraud

can prevail without showing that someone relied on the

defendant’s misrepresentations. Cf. Field v. Mans, 516

U. S. 59, 66 (1995) (“No one, of course, doubts that some

degree of reliance is required to satisfy the element of

causation inherent in the phrase ‘obtained by’ ” in 11

U. S. C. §523(a)(2)(A), which prohibits the discharge of

debts for money or property “obtained by” fraud). In most

cases, the plaintiff will not be able to establish even but-

for causation if no one relied on the misrepresentation. If,

for example, the county had not accepted petitioners’ false

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 19

Opinion of the Court

attestations of compliance with the Single, Simultaneous

Bidder Rule, and as a result had not permitted petitioners

to participate in the auction, respondents’ injury would

never have materialized. In addition, the complete ab-

sence of reliance may prevent the plaintiff from establish-

ing proximate cause. Thus, for example, if the county

knew petitioners’ attestations were false but nonetheless

permitted them to participate in the auction, then argua-

bly the county’s actions would constitute an intervening

cause breaking the chain of causation between petitioners’

misrepresentations and respondents’ injury.

Accordingly, it may well be that a RICO plaintiff alleg-

ing injury by reason of a pattern of mail fraud must estab-

lish at least third-party reliance in order to prove causa-

tion. “But the fact that proof of reliance is often used to

prove an element of the plaintiff’s cause of action, such as

the element of causation, does not transform reliance itself

into an element of the cause of action.” Anza, 547 U. S., at

478 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in

part). Nor does it transform first-party reliance into an

indispensable requisite of proximate causation. Proof that

the plaintiff relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations

may in some cases be sufficient to establish proximate

cause, but there is no sound reason to conclude that such

proof is always necessary. By the same token, the absence

of first-party reliance may in some cases tend to show that

an injury was not sufficiently direct to satisfy §1964(c)’s

proximate-cause requirement, but it is not in and of itself

dispositive. A contrary holding would ignore Holmes’

instruction that proximate cause is generally not amena-

ble to bright-line rules.

C

As a last resort, petitioners contend that we should

interpret RICO to require first-party reliance for fraud-

based claims in order to avoid the “over-federalization” of

20 BRIDGE v. PHOENIX BOND & INDEMNITY CO.

Opinion of the Court

traditional state-law claims. In petitioners’ view, respon-

dents’ claim is essentially one for tortious interference

with prospective business advantage, as evidenced by

Count V of their complaint. Such claims have tradition-

ally been handled under state law, and petitioners see no

reason why Congress would have wanted to supplement

traditional state-law remedies with a federal cause of

action, complete with treble damages and attorney’s fees,

in a statute designed primarily to combat organized crime.

See Anza, supra, at 471–475 (THOMAS, J., concurring in

part and dissenting in part); Beck, 529 U. S., at 496–497.

A first-party reliance requirement, they say, is necessary

“to prevent garden-variety disputes between local competi-

tors (such as this case) from being converted into federal

racketeering actions.” Reply Brief for Petitioners 3.

Whatever the merits of petitioners’ arguments as a

policy matter, we are not at liberty to rewrite RICO to

reflect their—or our—views of good policy. We have re-

peatedly refused to adopt narrowing constructions of

RICO in order to make it conform to a preconceived notion

of what Congress intended to proscribe. See, e.g., National

Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 510 U. S. 249,

252 (1994) (rejecting the argument that “RICO requires

proof that either the racketeering enterprise or the predi-

cate acts of racketeering were motivated by an economic

purpose”); H. J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co.,

492 U. S. 229, 244 (1989) (rejecting “the argument for

reading an organized crime limitation into RICO’s pattern

concept”); Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U. S. 479,

481 (1985) (rejecting the view that RICO provides a pri-

vate right of action “only against defendants who had been

convicted on criminal charges, and only where there had

occurred a ‘racketeering injury’ ”).

We see no reason to change course here. RICO’s text

provides no basis for imposing a first-party reliance re-

quirement. If the absence of such a requirement leads to

Cite as: 553 U. S. ____ (2008) 21

Opinion of the Court

the undue proliferation of RICO suits, the “correction

must lie with Congress.” Id., at 499. “It is not for the

judiciary to eliminate the private action in situations

where Congress has provided it.” Id., at 499–500.

IV

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that a plaintiff as-

serting a RICO claim predicated on mail fraud need not

show, either as an element of its claim or as a prerequisite

to establishing proximate causation, that it relied on the

defendant’s alleged misrepresentations. Accordingly, the

judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

It is so ordered.