Steve Ferguson v. Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community held that the private right of action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), requires a domestic injury. 579 U.S. 325, 354 (2016). Yegiazaryan v. Smagin held that RICO plaintiffs suffer domestic injury only if the “circumstances surrounding the alleged injury” indicate that it arose in the United States. 599 U.S. 533, 544-545 (2023). In Yegiazaryan, however, those circumstances uniformly suggested a domestic injury. Id. at 545-546. The Court thus lacked occasion to consider how to “weigh competing considerations that do not all point toward the same result.” Id. at 551 (Alito, J., dissenting). This case raises that issue. Invoking Florida RICO, which follows federal law, the Trinidadian government sued a Trinidadian citizen over contracts entered in Trinidad under Trinidadian law to construct a Trinidadian airport. Trinidad’s High Court held that the injurious effects of the purported racketeering were aimed at and manifested in Trinidad. Yet, purporting to apply Yegiazaryan, the Third District Court of Appeal of Florida disagreed, merely because some racketeering acts transpired in Florida. That holding presents the very risk that RJR Nabisco meant to avoid: a foreign government using U.S. RICO laws to seek treble damages unavailable abroad. The question presented is: Whether the Third District Court of Appeal misapprehended federal law by holding that a foreign plaintiff’s RICO injury arises domestically solely because some of the predicate racketeering acts took place in the United States. (I)