Judicial Pruning of Garden Variety Fraud Civil RICO Cases Does Not Work: It\u27s Time for Congress to Act

After many years of effort, Congress actually may amend substantively the civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act\u27- RICO -this year.\u27 So I am delighted to accept the timely invitation of the Vanderbilt Law Review to add my view of how the law should be revised.My RICO perspective comes from my years as a federal district court judge in Chicago from 1980 to 1987, when I witnessed the real birth and growth of civil RICO.\u27 I am told by my co-panelist, Professor G. Robert Blakey, that for a time I had written more RICO opinions than any other judge in the country. (This had nothing to do with my decision to leave the bench.) As I dealt with these cases, it became clear to me that most civil RICO cases simply should not be in federal court.The majority of civil RICO cases involve commonplace commercial controversies, the facts of which reveal an ordinary business relationship gone sour. These mercantile melees are recharacterized by resourceful attorneys to conform with the requirements of RICO: adding a few allegations of the use of the mails or wires in furtherance of a fraudulent scheme, describing how the mail or wire fraud offenses form a pattern,and explaining how the defendants conducted the affairs of an appropriate enterprise. Thus transmogrified, the ordinary state law fraud or contract action becomes a federal racketeering case, threatening treble damages, costs, and attorney\u27s fees. Not only is this transformation unfair to the typical commercial defendant, but it also burdens the dockets of the federal courts and multiplies the legal costs for both sides in otherwise straightforward litigation. Civil RICO is not intrinsically evil, however. It was designed to enable private plaintiffs to bring civil actions against persons engaged in a pattern of criminal activity. This intention is admirable, and RICO has succeeded in facilitating such civil actions. No one has claimed that the civil provision of the statute has failed to achieve its goal. The complaint is that civil RICO has succeeded too well

Politics ahead of patients: The battle between medical and chiropractic professional associations over the inclusion of chiropractic in the American Medicare System

Health care professions struggling for legitimacy, recognition, and market share can become disoriented to their priorities. Health care practitioners are expected to put the interests of patients first. Professional associations represent the interests of their members. So when a professional association is composed of health care practitioners, its interests may differ from those of patients, creating a conflict for members. In addition, sometimes practitioners’ perspectives may be altered by indoctrination in a belief system, or misinformation, so that a practitioner could be confused about the reality of patient needs. Politicians, in attempting to find an expedient compromise, can value a “win” in the legislative arena over the effects of that legislation. These forces all figure into the events that led to the acceptance of chiropractic into the American Medicare system. Two health care systems in a political fight lost sight of their main purpose: to provide care to patients without doing harm. Dans leur recherche de légitimité, de reconnaissance et d’une juste part sur le marché de la santé, les professionnels de la santé peuvent perdre de vue leurs priorités. Ces praticiens doivent donner préséance aux intérêts des patients tandis que les associations professionnelles représentent ceux de leurs membres. Lorsqu’une association professionnelle regroupe des praticiens de la santé cependant, ses intérêts s’opposent parfois à ceux des patients, créant ainsi un conflit pour les membres. De plus, les praticiens peuvent être endoctrinés par un système de valeurs ou mal informés, au point de se tromper dans l’évaluation des besoins réels des patients. De leur côté, les politiciens peuvent préférer une « victoire » dans l’arène législative à une juste appréciation des impacts d’une loi. Ces forces ont toutes participé aux évènements qui ont mené à l’acceptation de la chiropraxie par le système américain Medicare. Dans cette bataille politique, deux systèmes de santé ont négligé leur principal objectif : soigner des patients sans leur nuire