law, and because of the plaintiff's ability to expand the scope of the claim to include a wide variety of the defendant's conduct over a long period of time. This infusion of complex cases threatens the courts' ability to handle other cases of concern under federal law. That is why the Judicial Conference of the United States has twice called on Congress to reform the civil provisions of RICO substantially, and why Chief Justice Rehnquist recently reiterated the need for substantial reform of this statute. It makes no sense to burden the federal courts with claims long-handled under other state and federal laws simply because the broad language of RICO happens to sweep them in, especially when that burden threatens the courts' ability to provide fair and speedy justice in those matters properly brought before the federal judiciary. Abusive Civil RICO Suits Are Not Being Summarily Dismissed. The oft-repeated claim of the opponents of civil RICO reform is that federal court judges are dismissing all of the so-called "abusive" civil RICO suits. That assertion is simply not true. For example, some firms in the securities field no longer even file a motion to dismiss a RICO cause of action because they cannot get the RICO count thrown out a securities case is too easily pleaded as a RICO claim. I hasten to point out that these same companies rarely, if ever, lose a civil RICO claim at trial but - - prevail at considerable cost in attorneys' fees and time lost to the demands of the wide-ranging discovery that a civil RICO claim permits. The problem with civil RICO is not that the language of the statute does not permit civil suits that are brought anyway, but that the broad language of the statute does permit the bringing of civil suits under provisions which Congress constructed with criminal prosecutions in mind. The dilemma RICO thus poses is illustrated by two cases the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided, one a civil RICO case and the other a criminal RICO case. These two cases presented similar issues regarding what constitutes a "pattern of racketeering activity." The civil case, Beauford v. Helmsley, 865 F.2d 1386 (2nd Cir. 1989), involved a suit by a condominium owner and prospective condominium owners against a real estate partnership for mailing false statements regarding the state of repair of the buildings undergoing condominium conversion. Plaintiffs claimed that they had either purchased units relying on representations regarding, among other things, the plumbing repairs, or they had not purchased units because of high prices which they attributed to the same representations.. Both the trial court (Beauford v. Helmsley, 650 F.Supp. 548 (S.D.N.Y. 1986)), and a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit (Beauford v. Helmsley, 843 F.2d. 103 (2nd Cir. 1988)), determined that these mailings did not constitute a pattern of racketeering activity. The companion criminal case, United States V. Indelicato, 865 F.2d. 1370 (2nd Cir. 1989), involved the defendant's prosecution under criminal RICO for three simultaneous murders, which the jury found constituted a pattern of racketeering activity. It is obvious from reading these two companion decisions that the Second Circuit, sitting en banc, greatly desired to uphold the dismissal of the civil case (Helmsley) while upholding the conviction in the criminal case (Indelicato). The source of the Second Circuit's dilemma wa was that legal precedents under RICO apply without distinction to both civil and criminal RICO cases. In other words, what would be sauce for the civil goose, Helmsley, would also be sauce for the criminal gander, Indelicato. The Second Circuit struggled with this inherent tension in these two cases before finally conceding that it was better to open the floodgates of civil RICO than to let a convicted murderer go free. Thus, in order to uphold the conviction in Indelicato, with its three simultaneous murders, the Court had to embrace an interpretation of the "pattern" requirement that required the court to reverse the dismissal of the Helmsley case, even if it did not seem like a proper situation for a racketeering claim to go forward. This realization led the Helmsley court to lament the consequences of its decision: "We recognize that our reframing today of the enterprise In Judicial construction cannot limit the misuse of civil RICO without restricting criminal prosecutions to an equal degree. sum, Helmsley and Indelicato underscore the urgency for legislative action that deals specifically with abuse of civil RICO. Congressional action appears to be the only means of curbing the abuse of the statute without limiting its effectiveness as a weapon against organized crime. Civil RICO Is "Federalizing" State Fraud Law. our The critical problem of civil RICO which confronts overburdened federal courts is not merely the filing of additional thousands of federal lawsuits each year. Civil RICO is displacing litigation that has traditionally been tried in our state courts. The claims of distress by our federal courts are legion in the reported decisions. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, for instance, exclaimed its frustration in a civil RICO action brought by a land developer against a rival land developer for allegedly subverting a Virginia county's land use planning process: "In enacting RICO, Congress did not intend to preempt How urgent is the need to eliminate the threat that civil RICO poses for "federalizing" state law and state court litigation? Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York recently wrote in overturning a $23-million RICO verdict awarded to a county government won against a state public utility arising from state utility hearings: ". . . no case, no language of the statute and no |