Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn

                   PRELIMINARY PRINT

              Volume 604 U. S. Part 2
                             Pages 593–649




       OFFICIAL REPORTS
                                     OF


   THE SUPREME COURT
                                April 2, 2025


Page Proof Pending Publication


                    REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
                           reporter of decisions




    NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before
  the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter
  of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,
  [email protected], of any typographical or other formal errors.
                        OCTOBER TERM, 2024                              593

                                 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 purchased and began taking “Dixie X,” a purportedly THC-free, non-psychoactive CBD tincture produced by Medical Marijuana, Inc. A few
  weeks later, however, Horn's employer selected him for a random drug
  screening, and Horn tested positive for THC. After he refused to participate in a substance-abuse program, his employer fred him. Horn
  then sued Medical Marijuana under the Racketeer Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which creates a cause of action for
  “[a]ny person business or property · Case Law">injured in his business or property” by reason of a criminal RICO violation. 

(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 personal
Page Proof Pending Publication
  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. 600–614.
    (a) The sole question before the Court is whether civil RICO categorically 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
 “business” encompasses all aspects of “employment,” and what “injured
 in his . . . property” means for purposes of § 1964(c). P. 600.
    (b) Section 1964(c) provides that “[a]ny person injured in his business
 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.
594            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                                 Syllabus

     Even so, § 1964(c) does not allow recovery for all harms. By explicitly
  permitting recovery for harms to business and property, § 1964(c) implicitly 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 robbery force him to shut his doors, he can recover for the loss of his business. A plaintiff can seek damages for business or property loss, in
  other words, regardless of whether the loss resulted from a personal
  injury. Pp. 600–601.
     (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 defnition, Medical Marijuana asserts that “injured in his business or property” means “suffered
  an invasion of a business or property right”—i. e., a business or property
  tort. And Medical Marijuana contends that the invasion of a personal
  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
Page Proof Pending Publication
  without the term of art. True, “injury” can mean the “invasion of a
  legal right,” but even legal dictionaries confrm 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 relies
  on defnes “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 damages he sustains” refers to monetary redress—i. e., a plaintiff may recover triple
  the amount that makes him whole. Pp. 602–604.
      (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., 

 (“[T]he compensable injury necessarily is the harm caused by
  predicate acts suffciently related to constitute a pattern”); Anza v. Ideal
  Steel Supply Corp., 

; Hemi Group, LLC v. City of
  New York, 

. Medical Marijuana's tort-centric defnition
  of “injured” also stands in signifcant tension with the Court's holding
  in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin, 

. In Yegiazaryan the Court
  addressed the circumstances in which injuries to property qualify as
  “domestic” and thus provide a basis for recovery under § 1964(c). Yegi-
                      Cite as: 

 (2025)                     595

                                Syllabus

 azaryan urged the Court to rely on common-law principles governing
 “ `the situs' ” of economic and property injuries. 

 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 547. 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. 604–606.
    (e) While Medical Marijuana insists that the Court's antitrust precedent 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. European
 Community, 

. Pp. 606–608.
    (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 hypotheticals
 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
 a ransom payment despite the antecedent kidnapping; and it insists that
 a human-traffcking victim can sue for her business or property 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.
    Defning “injured” by reference to legal rights also raises questions
 about defning the right at issue. Medical Marijuana's proposed solution—that courts should consult the complaint, state law, and general
 tort principles—does not work. Taking those sources in order, the parties' disagreement over whether Horn pleaded a personal injury exposes
 the problems with looking to the plaintiff's complaint. Relying on state
 law would create choice-of-law questions. And looking to general 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 diffcult to apply when there is no clear analogue or
 majority rule. Pp. 608–612.
    (g) Medical Marijuana warns that the Second Circuit's rule will eviscerate 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 something
 quite different from the original conception of its enactors,” Sedima,
596            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                          Opinion of the Court

  

, and Medical Marijuana is not the frst 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.” 

. Pp. 612–613.

, affrmed and remanded.

  Barrett, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Sotomayor,
Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson, JJ., joined. Jackson, J., fled a concurring opinion, post, p. 614. Thomas, J., fled a dissenting opinion, post,
p. 614. Kavanaugh, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts,
C. J., and Alito, J., joined, post, p. 624.

  Lisa S. Blatt argued the cause for petitioners. With her
on the briefs were Sarah M. Harris, Aaron Z. Roper, Kristen A. DeWilde, Roy A. Mura, Scott D. Mancuso, Richard
E. Lerner, and Hanoch Sheps.
  Easha Anand argued the cause for respondent. With her
on the brief were Jeffrey Benjamin and Pamela S. Karlan.*

 Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court.
Page     Proof Pending Publication
 The Racketeer Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
(RICO) creates a cause of action for “[a]ny person injured in
his business or property.” 

(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.

  *Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the Chamber of
Commerce of the United States of America et al. by Donald M. Falk,
Gene C. Schaerr, and Jonathan D. Urick; for the DRI Center for Law and
Public Policy et al. by Sarah Elizabeth Spencer and Lawrence S. Ebner;
and for the Washington Legal Foundation by John M. Masslon II and
Cory L. Andrews.
  Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the American
Association for Justice by Robert S. Peck and Jeffrey R. White; and for
the Human Traffcking Legal Center by Amit R. Vora.
  Briefs of amici curiae were fled for U. S. Hemp Roundtable, Inc., by
James C. Martin, Kim M. Watterson, and Nolan M. Jackson; and for
Thomas Fuller Ogden, pro se.
                       Cite as: 

 (2025)                   597

                          Opinion of the Court

                                    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 alternative,
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” 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.
Page Proof Pending Publication
Medical Marijuana's online FAQ page promised that Dixie X
was “legal to consume both here in the U.S. and in many
countries abroad.” Id., at 40. Additional research, including a call to a customer-service representative, reinforced
those representations. Satisfed 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 substance-abuse program—in his view, doing so would constitute “an
admission to doing drugs,” id., at 91–92—his employer fred
  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
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).
598          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                       Opinion of the Court

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 

(c). He
alleged that Medical Marijuana was a RICO “ `enterprise' ”
engaged in marketing, distributing, and selling Dixie X.
§ 1961(4); see United States v. Turkette, 

(1981) (a RICO enterprise is “a group of persons associated
together for a common purpose of engaging in a course of
conduct”). He also asserted that Medical Marijuana's false
or misleading advertising satisfed the elements of mail and
wire fraud and that those crimes constituted a “ `pattern of
racketeering activity.' ” §§ 1961(1), (5); see also §§ 1341,
1343.
Page Proof Pending Publication
   The District Court granted summary judgment to Medical
Marijuana on the RICO claim. According to the court,
Horn's lost employment “fow[ed] from, and [was] derivative
of, a personal injury he suffered”—the introduction of THC
“into his system through the ingestion of Dixie X.” 

, *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.' ” 

(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. 

. So for Horn, § 1964(c) offered no path to
relief.
   The Second Circuit reversed. 

 (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 industrial establishment or enterprise,' ” but also an individual's
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)            599

                      Opinion of the Court

“ `employment.' ” 

 at 135–136. Adopting the broad
defnition, the Second Circuit concluded that Horn had been
“ `injured in his business' ” when he lost his job. 

   It then turned to the District Court's holding that a plaintiff like Horn cannot recover for a business or property harm
that fows from an “antecedent personal injury.” Id., at 137.
Horn insisted that any personal-injury bar was inapplicable
because the court had mischaracterized his “unwitting ingestion of THC” as a “personal injury” from which his lost employment derived. Id., at 135, n. 2. But the Second Circuit
put this issue aside, instead holding that § 1964(c) does not
impose an “antecedent-personal-injury 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 structure” justifes
reading this “negative implication” to exclude recovery for
Page Proof Pending Publication
all business and property injuries that happen to derive from
a personal injury. Id., at 138. Rather, Congress “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 Second 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.,

 (CA6 2013) (en banc); Doe v. Roe, 

 (CA7 1992); Grogan v. Platt, 

(CA11 1988). The Second Circuit has joined the Ninth Circuit in refusing to distinguish between a business or property loss suffered as an immediate consequence of a RICO
violation and one “derived from” or “a secondary effect of ”
600          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                      Opinion of the Court

a personal injury. Diaz v. Gates, 

 (2005)
(en banc). We granted certiorari to resolve the split. 

 (2024).
                                B
   Because this case implicates several issues that fall outside
the scope of the question presented, we begin by emphasizing 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 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 corPage Proof Pending Publication
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 challenged 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 parties
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 reserved the
question “whether Horn suffered an injury to property when
he lost his job.” 

. 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
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 (2025)                  601

                          Opinion of the Court

sue. . . .” (Emphasis added.) The ordinary meaning of “injure” is to “cause harm or damage to” or to “hurt.” American Heritage Dictionary 676 (1969); Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1164 (1971) (“to impair the soundness
of ”; “to infict 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 Webster's
Third New International Dictionary, at 1164.3 The meaning
of the relevant phrase is therefore straightforward: 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 business and property, it implicitly excludes recovery for harm
to one's person. See RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European ComPage Proof Pending Publication
munity, 

, 350 (2016); see also A. Scalia & B.
Garner, Reading Law § 10, p. 107 (2012) (“[S]pecifcation 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 recover for his pain and suffering. But if his injuries force
him to shut his doors, he can recover for the loss of his business. In short, a plaintiff can seek damages for business or
property loss regardless of whether the loss resulted from a
personal injury.

  3
   Section 1964(c), which was enacted in 1970, see 

, was modeled on a materially identical provision in the Clayton Act, which was
enacted in 1914, see 

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

 (1987). “Injure” had the same
meaning then. See Webster's New International Dictionary 1111 (1913)
(defning “injure” as “[t]o do harm to; to hurt; damage; impair” and “injury” as “[d]amage or hurt done to or suffered by a person or thing”).
602             MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                           Opinion of the Court

                                     B
   Medical Marijuana resists this conclusion, contending that
“injured in his business or property” carries a specialized
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 defnition, Medical Marijuana, echoed by the principal dissent, argues that “injured
in his business or property” means “suffered an invasion 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 631 (opinion of Kavanaugh,
J.). 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.” Brief for Petitioners 15.
   It is true that “injury” can mean “invasion of a legal
Page Proof Pending Publication
right.” But even in the language of lawyers, this specialized
defnition is not exclusive. Ballentine's, for example, defnes
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 Dictionary, at 627. And Black's defnes “injury” to mean “[a]ny
wrong or damage done to another, either in his person,
rights, reputation, or property.” Black's Law Dictionary
   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 defnition. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 7(1); see post, at
625, 628 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). Under their view, then, a civil
RICO plaintiff must establish not just one but two injuries: frst, a violation of the statutory right established by § 1964(c), and second, a violation
of a right recognized by the common law of torts.
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)           603

                      Opinion of the Court

924 (rev. 4th ed. 1968) (emphasis added). So in legal dictionaries, 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, 

 (2023). Here,
context cuts decisively in favor of ordinary meaning. As an
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
relies includes the specialized meaning (“invasion of a legal
right”) in the possible defnitions of “injury,” it defnes “injured” only according to its ordinary meaning: “[h]urt, damaged, [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
Page Proof Pending Publication
presence of the word “damages” does not suggest that “injured” 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 damages he sustains.” (Emphasis added.) Medical Marijuana
insists that the defnitions 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, 

 (2013)
(quoting Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 

(2004)). According to Medical Marijuana, “damage[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 suffered 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
604          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                      Opinion of the Court

“damage.” Yet the distinction matters, because “damages”
has a specialized legal meaning referring to monetary redress. See Ballentine's Law Dictionary, at 303; American
Stevedores, Inc. v. Porello, 

 (1947).
Section 1964(c) is best read as using “damages” in precisely
this way. By allowing a plaintiff to recover “threefold the
damages he sustains,” the statute allows a plaintiff to recover 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 consistent with the meaningful-variation canon. Besides, Medical Marijuana's preferred defnition of “damages” is untenable. Under it, the statute would allow a plaintiff to recover
“threefold the loss, hurt, or harm he sustains.” That makes
little sense.
                               C
Page Proof Pending
              1    Publication
   Medical Marijuana admits that “depending on context, injury can mean harm” and that “injury, harm, and damages”
can be used interchangeably. Reply Brief 8. Tellingly, it
ignores the many cases treating the terms synonymously in
this very context.
   Sedima holds that “the compensable injury necessarily is
the harm caused by predicate acts suffciently related to constitute a pattern.” Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 

 (1985) (emphasis added). Tracking Sedima,
Anza is replete with language about the plaintiff's harms.
See, e.g., Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 

(2006) (“Ideal's theory is that Joseph and Vincent Anza
harmed it”); 

 (“To be sure, Ideal asserts it suffered
its own harms”); 

 (“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
                      Cite as: 

 (2025)                   605

                          Opinion of the Court

the directness of the relationship between the conduct and
the harm.” Hemi Group, LLC v. City of New York, 

 (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., 

 (2008) (“For
present purposes, it suffces 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.,

 (1997) (“[T]heir injuries—the harm to their
farm—have always been specifc and calculable”); Holmes v.
Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 

 (1992) (equating “injuries” with “losses suffered”). Accepting Medical Marijuana's argument would require an
about-face.
   Vocabulary aside, if “injured” does not mean “harmed,” it
is diffcult to understand our holding in Yegiazaryan v.
Smagin. 

 (2023). There, we addressed the cirPage Proof Pending Publication
cumstances in which injuries to property qualify as “domestic” 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 established a
“bright-line rule”: An injury is located at the plaintiff's domicile. Ibid. We rejected his argument, reasoning that he
had not clearly explained why those principles were “germane” to § 1964(c). Id., at 547. His view, we observed,
“generate[d] results . . . far afeld from any reasonable inter-
   5
     The principal dissent thinks that Bridge supports its view, but the
opposite is true. See post, at 642 (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. 

. There was no reason to think, we explained, 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 precisely
that logic.
606            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                           Opinion of the Court

pretation of what qualifes as a domestic application of
§ 1964(c).” Id., at 548. We instead adopted a contextual,
fact-intensive inquiry that accounts for “the nature of the
alleged injury, the racketeering activity that directly caused
it, and the injurious aims and effects of that activity.” Id.,
at 544 (footnote omitted).
   Medical Marijuana's argument stands in signifcant tension
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. Restatement of
Confict of Laws § 377 (1934). Those principles dictate 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,
Page Proof Pending Publication
599 U. S., at 546. But this is the precise approach we outlined in Yegiazaryan. And we rejected the petitioner's appeal to the common law, deeming it inconsistent 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 precedent settles the issue. See post, at 631–635 (opinion of
Kavanaugh, J.). But their reliance on antitrust law is
misplaced.6
  Despite what the principal dissent says, antitrust law has
not “long required plaintiffs to allege business or property

   6
     As the principal dissent itself observes: “Few antitrust violations are
likely to infict personal injury” because “anticompetitive acts break laws,
not legs.” Post, at 636 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.). Well put—and all
the more reason to wonder why antitrust law is particularly helpful here.
                        Cite as: 

 (2025)                      607

                            Opinion of the Court

injuries” that track common-law torts.7 See post, at 629–
630, 634. 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 damage action, that [the] plaintiff was damaged thereby
are all the law requires.” Radiant Burners, Inc. v. Peoples
Gas Light & Coke Co., 

 (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 allegedly monopolistic retailer.” Apple Inc. v. Pepper, 

 (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 violated”
according to the common law of torts. Post, at 633 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting).8
   In fact, to the extent our modern antitrust precedent forePage Proof Pending Publication
closes recovery for certain economic harms, it does so because of a requirement that we have expressly declined to
extend to civil RICO. Several decades ago, we interpreted
  7
     Tellingly, the principal dissent builds its antitrust argument on a single
sentence from a century-old case about rate fxing, see Keogh v. Chicago &
Northwestern R. Co., 

 (1922), and an unadorned citation
to a District Court case, see Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 

, 339
(1979) (citing Hamman v. United States, 

 (Mont.
1967)). Post, at 632–633 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.). And while the dissent claims that we have recognized the former as “ `settled law,' ” post, at
633, 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., 

, 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 satisfed provided there is some kind of injury that can
properly be characterized as economic.” 2A P. Areeda, H. Hovenkamp,
R. Blair, & C. Durrance, Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles and Their Application § 336 (5th ed. 2021).
608          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                       Opinion of the Court

the Clayton Act to require a particular kind of injury—
namely, an “injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent.” Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo BowlO-Mat, Inc., 

 (1977); Atlantic Richfeld Co.
v. USA Petroleum Co., 

 (1990) (This “requirement . . . ensures that the harm claimed by the plaintiff corresponds to the rationale for fnding a violation of the
antitrust laws in the frst place” (emphasis added)). In Sedima, however, we concluded that “transplant[ing]” this
cause-of-action-specifc interpretation of “injured” into the
RICO context “would be inappropriate.” RJR Nabisco,

 (describing Sedima). Rejecting the Second
Circuit's “[a]nalog[y] to the Clayton Act,” we held that a civil
RICO plaintiff need not allege a “ `racketeering' ” or “ `RICOtype 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
the statutory language” we explained, “for an additional,
amorphous `racketeering injury' requirement.” Id., at 495;
see also Holmes, 

 (“ `[A]ntitrust injury'
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, 

.
                                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 result, the owner has suffered a “business or property injury.”
                       Cite as: 

 (2025)                   609

                          Opinion of the Court

Brief for Petitioners 34. But why? The business or property loss fowed from an assault on the carwash owner. According to Medical Marijuana, the example works because
“[f]orcing someone to do business with the mob instead of a
cheaper, legitimate competitor is a prototypical business or
property injury.” 

 It offers nothing, however, to support 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 computer password obtained by violence, Mr. Soprano has injured the account holder's property by taking his money.”

 at 34–35 (citation omitted). It concedes that § 1964(c)
allows recovery for a ransom payment, even if a kidnapPage Proof Pending Publication
ping—a personal harm—was the catalyst. Id., at 34. And
it insists that a human-traffcking victim can sue for her business or property harm, even though the harm necessarily
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, defning
“injured” by reference to legal rights raises diffcult questions about how to defne the right at issue. And Medical

  9
    The principal dissent has the same problem. It asserts that “negligently driving a car into a pedestrian” inficts a personal injury that it
calls “wrongful invasion of the pedestrian's physical safety.” Post, at 631
(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 fxed categorization as a business, property, or
personal tort.)
610            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                          Opinion of the Court

Marijuana's proposed solution is illusory.10 Its reply 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 asserted 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 confict?
   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 

. We express no view on which party is right, but
their disagreement exposes the gaps in Medical Marijuana's
theory. Do the plaintiff's asserted causes of action govern?
Page Proof Pending Publication
Or must a court try to match the alleged facts with a particular business or property tort? And what if no particular
tort squarely governs the facts of the case? As Horn notes,
“harboring” undocumented immigrants and “ `traffcking 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 

(1); 

 (harboring); 

(traffcking).
   Next, consider state law. In its briefng, Medical Marijuana 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 Common-

  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
familiar judicial exercise.” Post, at 643 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.). Suffce it to say, we have our doubts.
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)           611

                      Opinion of the Court

wealth v. Stratton, 

, 304–305 (1873); Gupta v.
Asha Enterprises, L.L.C., 422 N. J. Super. 136, 142, 153–154,

 (App. Div. 2011)). But if state law
controls, other questions arise. States need not defne their
torts using the specifc categories of “business,” “person,”
and “property.” Nor do all torts obviously fall into a particular category. Some States, for example, have recently recognized a tort action against medical providers who disclose
“information obtained during treatment.” See Lawson v.
Halpern-Reiss, 

, 

, 233, 

; Byrne v. Avery Center for Obstetrics & Gynecology, P.C., 

, 564–568, 

, 15–17 (2018).
Does disclosure implicate a privacy interest? 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 quesPage Proof Pending Publication
tions. Many RICO enterprises transcend the boundaries of
a single jurisdiction. See 

(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., 

 (1987) (“[P]redicate acts will often occur in
several States”). Which jurisdiction must supply the necessary tort-law analogue? Is it where the plaintiff felt her
injury? Where the defendant engaged in the racketeering
activity? 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 theoretical
problems of its own. For one, like state tort law, general
tort law does not always clearly distinguish between “business,” “personal,” and “property” torts. For another, general tort law is neither static nor uniform. See Air & Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries, 

 (2019)
(observing that “the federal and state courts ha[d] not
reached consensus on how to apply” a particular principle of
612         MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                      Opinion of the Court

general tort law). When a majority rule does not exist,
when the law is unsettled, or when there is no analogous
tort, deferring to general tort principles is diffcult, to say
the least.
                        …
   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 tortfeasor.) 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 fghting the most natural interpretation of
the text—that “injured” means “harmed”—with no plausible
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
Page Proof Pending Publication
“business or property” limitation. See post, at 635 (opinion
of Kavanaugh, J.). In their view, a plaintiff can characterize any economic harm fowing from a personal injury as a
harm to his business or property. Hence, they say, plaintiffs
can easily transform garden-variety personal-injury claims
into RICO suits for treble damages. While we understand
the concern, Medical Marijuana and the dissent understate
other constraints on civil RICO claims.
   First and foremost is RICO's direct-relationship requirement. Time and again, we have reiterated that § 1964(c)'s
“by reason of ” language demands “some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged.” Holmes, 

. The key word is “direct”; foreseeability does not cut it. Hemi Group, 

. Rather, whenever the plaintiff's theory of causation
requires moving “well beyond the frst step,” it “cannot meet
RICO's direct relationship requirement.” 

.
   Given the number of steps in Horn's theory and the multiple actors involved, this requirement may present an insur-
                    Cite as: 

 (2025)              613

                        Opinion of the Court

mountable obstacle in his case. Indeed, even Horn concedes
that he faces “a heavy burden on remand.” Tr. of Oral Arg.
45, 63, 70. There is, after all, some distance between the
frst link in the chain (Medical Marijuana's misrepresentations) and the last (Horn's job loss).
   Second, pleading a RICO claim is not as simple as pointing
to a business or property harm. A plaintiff must frst establish a pattern of racketeering activity. 

,
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, continued
criminal activity.” H. J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 

 (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
Page Proof Pending Publication
not encompass every aspect of employment, and “property”
may not include every penny in the plaintiff's pocketbook.
Accordingly, not every monetary harm—be it lost wages,
medical expenses, or otherwise—necessarily implicates
RICO. Medical Marijuana brushes away this possibility, instead attributing the broadest defnitions to both terms.
   All of this said, civil RICO has undeniably evolved “into
something quite different from the original conception of its
enactors.” Sedima, 

. More suits are
brought against ordinary businesses than against “archetypal, intimidating mobster[s],” 

, and given this
development, Medical Marijuana is not the frst litigant to
express concern about “the `over-federalization' of traditional state-law claims,” Bridge, 

. But we
respond today as we have before: If the breadth of the statute “leads to the undue proliferation of RICO suits, the `correction must lie with Congress.' ” 

 at 660 (quoting
Sedima, 

); see also H. J. Inc., 492 U. S., at 248–
249; Boyle v. United States, 

, 950–951 (2009).
614          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

                         …
   The phrase “injured in his business or property” does not
preclude recovery for all economic harms that result from
personal injuries. We therefore affrm the Second Circuit's
judgment and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
                                             It is so ordered.
  Justice Jackson, concurring.
  When Congress speaks, courts should listen. Congress
has instructed that the Racketeer Infuenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act (RICO) “shall be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes.” § 904(a), 

.
That instruction applies with particular force to the remedial
provision of RICO at issue in this case, 

(c),
which creates “a private action for those injured by racketeering activity.” Sedima, S. P. R. L. v. Imrex Co., 473
Page Proof Pending Publication
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.

  Justice Thomas, dissenting.
   The Racketeer Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
(RICO) allows any person “injured in his business or property by reason of ” racketeering activity to bring a civil suit
for damages. 

(c). All agree that this “civil
RICO” statute forbids suits based on “personal injuries.”
RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 

 (2016). We granted certiorari in this case to resolve
a Circuit split on “[w]hether economic harms resulting from
personal injuries” are “injuries to `business or property' ”
under civil RICO or are instead personal-injury damages.
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 suffered
                      Cite as: 

 (2025)                  615

                         Thomas, J., dissenting

a personal injury in the frst 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 diffculties, the Court today issues a
narrow opinion that elides the parties' primary disputes.
Rather than opine on ancillary issues, I would dismiss the
writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. I respectfully
dissent.
                              I
   Plaintiff Douglas Horn lost his job as a commercial truck
driver after a random drug test revealed tetrahydrocannabinol (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.1
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,
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 racketeering
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. Specifcally, Medical Marijuana asserted that Horn
had “failed to produce any evidence or testimony that [he]
suffered any bodily injury from ingesting Dixie X.” Memo-
  1
    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 throughout
this opinion.
616         MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

randum 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 argument and rejected some of Horn's state-law claims based on
his failure to establish a personal injury. 

 (WDNY 2019). The court explained that although
Horn seeks damages for “economic losses,” he does “not
claim that [he] suffered any personal injury . . . as a result
of [Medical Marijuana's] conduct.” 

   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 frst
time that Horn's civil RICO claim failed as a matter of law
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 “ingest[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 Marijuana, 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.” 

, *3 (WDNY, Sept. 14, 2021). And, because civil
RICO precludes suits based on personal injuries, the District
Court determined that Horn's civil RICO claim “fail[ed] as a
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)             617

                      Thomas, J., dissenting

matter of law.” Id., at *5. The District Court granted partial fnal judgment on the civil RICO claim to allow Horn
to appeal.
   Before the Second Circuit, Horn did not contest the District 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
frst place.
   The Second Circuit declined to decide whether Horn had
suffered a personal injury. Instead, the court resolved what
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 fow from, or
are derivative of, a personal injury.” 

(2023). Deepening a Circuit split, the Second Circuit held
that civil RICO permits a plaintiff to sue for injuries to business or property that “fow from, or are derivative of, an
Page Proof Pending Publication
antecedent personal injury.” 

.
   Medical Marijuana petitioned this Court for certiorari,
asking us to decide whether economic harms resulting from
personal injuries are injuries to “business or property”
under 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. 

 (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 below
did not pass upon. And, the intertwined question of how to
defne a civil RICO injury is inadequately briefed.
618         MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

                              A
   We took this case to decide whether economic losses fowing from personal injuries are injuries to business or property for purposes of civil RICO, or merely damages. That
question necessarily assumes the existence of a personal injury as the starting point.
   Yet, in this case, the parties vigorously contest whether
Horn suffered a personal injury at all. Despite its earlier
theory that Horn had not suffered a personal injury, see
supra, at 616–617, Medical Marijuana now argues that “Horn
suffered a quintessential personal injury” by “ingesting an
unwanted 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
X. 

. The only court to have passed
on the issue—the District Court—expressed different views
at different points. See supra, at 616–617.
   I would not decide whether losses fowing from personal
injuries are injuries to business or property in a case where
no one knows whether the plaintiff suffered a personal injury
in the frst place. If Horn did not suffer a personal injury,
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, 

 (1975) (internal quotation marks omitted), we
ordinarily do not decide matters unless we know that our
decision will have some import for the parties before 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
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)            619

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

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

 (2024) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting). The
question presented asks us to analyze the nature of losses
that fow from a personal injury. It is diffcult to analyze
the nature of downstream losses when the nature of the initial event is unknown. Medical Marijuana asserts that the
kind of loss at issue here—lost wages—can sometimes constitute an “injury,” depending on the circumstances and the
event from which the lost wages fow. Reply Brief 15.
That we do not know whether this case involves a personal
injury severely “complicates our inquiry,” and thus counsels
in favor of dismissing the writ of certiorari as improvidently
granted. McDonough v. Smith, 

 (2019)
(Thomas, J., dissenting); accord, Arizona v. City and County
of San Francisco, 

 (2022) (Roberts, C. J.,
concurring) (concurring in the dismissal of the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted because other contested issues
Page Proof Pending Publication
“could stand in the way of our reaching the question presented . . . or at the very least, complicate 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 frst view.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 

(2005). And, whether Horn suffered a personal injury is a
case-specifc factual fnding. Such questions do not ordinarily 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 another phase.' ” New Hampshire v. Maine, 

(2001). Medical Marijuana initially argued that Horn had not
alleged a cognizable personal injury. See supra, at 615–616.
The District Court agreed and dismissed some of Horn's
state-law tort claims on that ground. Then, shortly before
620         MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

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 Opposition 19–20. Depending on the outcome before this Court,
the estoppel issue could be litigated on remand. This additional complication is yet another reason to dismiss the writ
of certiorari as improvidently granted.
   Resolving the question presented would be far more
straightforward in a case where the personal injury is beyond dispute. For example, imagine a case in which racketeering activity inficts a classic personal injury—such as a
broken arm—and as a result, the plaintiff suffers economic
loss in the form of medical expenses. Such a case would
cleanly tee up the question dividing the Circuits: whether
the economic loss fowing from a personal injury qualifes as
an injury to business or property under civil RICO.
Page Proof Pending Publication
   The question presented is important and merits our attention. 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 defnition of the phrase “injured in his
business or property” in civil RICO. § 1964(c). To understand 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 defnition 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,'
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)            621

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

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 defnition of “injured in his business or property.” § 1964(c). Horn argues
that an injury to “business” is any harm to one's employment, and employment, in Horn's view, “embraces everything 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 Marijuana tell us exactly how it would defne those legal rights.
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 briefng on this matter, we are not well positioned 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, 

 (2023)
(internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the meaning of
“property”—and the way that courts determine the meaning
of that term—is likely to bear on the meaning of “business.”
It may be important that a number of courts have held that
“whether a particular interest amounts to property is quintessentially a question of state law.” Doe v. Roe, 

 (CA7 1992) (citing Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co.,

 (1982)); see also Price v. Pinnacle Brands,
Inc., 

 (CA5 1998) (per curiam) (explaining
622          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

that courts “may look to state law to determine, for RICO
purposes, whether a property interest exists”). Until we
are prepared to defne the entirety of the phrase “injured in
his business or property,” my preference is to say nothing
at all.
                            III
   The Court's opinion underscores why we should dismiss
the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. Perhaps
due to the diffculties described above, the Court declines
to resolve the question presented. It also declines to offer
defnitive guidance on what it means for a plaintiff to be “injured in his business or property.” § 1964(c). Instead, as
Justice Kavanaugh explains, “the Court charts an unusual
middle way.” Post, at 626 (dissenting opinion). It affrms
a component of the Second Circuit's decision that no party
seems to dispute. It then defnes one word within the disputed statutory phrase, leaving the most critical and
Page Proof Pending Publication
outcome-determinative issues for another day. If these limited holdings are the most we can offer, then our grant of
certiorari was plainly improvident.

                              A
  The Court affrms the Second Circuit's conclusion that civil
RICO “does not preclude recovery for all economic harms
that result from personal injuries.” Ante, at 614. In other
words, the Court affrms the Second Circuit's determination
that civil RICO does not contain a so-called “antecedent-personal-injury bar.” 

. But, as far as I can
tell, no party has ever contested that point.
  The “antecedent-personal-injury bar” appears to be a concept 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-
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)           623

                     Thomas, J., dissenting

sonal injury, he may not recover for any subsequent injuries
to his business or property that follow or fow from it.
   In my view, the majority misunderstands Medical Marijuana to be advocating for that rule. See ante, at 609. The
majority describes the “only question” before us as “whether
civil RICO bars recovery for all business or property harms
that derive from a personal injury.” Ante, at 600. 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 fow from a personal injury.
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 damages.
Thus, the question squarely before us is whether the economic harms in this case—Horn's lost wages—constitute a
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 644
(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; 

. 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 600–601. But, defning 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
624          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

would defne “injured” in slightly different terms, their biggest disagreement concerns what is injured or harmed. According to Horn, a plaintiff can bring a civil RICO suit so
long as his business—broadly defned to mean “everything”
about employment—is harmed. Brief for Respondent 12
(internal quotation marks omitted). And, according to Medical 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 unresolved.
   The Court's limited holding is bound to “leave substantial
confusion and litigation in its wake.” Post, at 648 (opinion
of Kavanaugh, J.). Notwithstanding its decision to affrm,
the Court is unwilling to say that Horn has alleged a cognizable injury to his business under civil RICO. The Court
makes clear that it is not deciding whether the Second Circuit correctly interpreted “business” to encompass “employPage Proof Pending Publication
ment.” Ante, at 600. The Court also makes clear that it is
not deciding the defnition of “property.” Ibid. I appreciate the hesitation to defne an entire phrase in a case where
neither party offers a complete defnition. But, rather than
defne 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 directly
bears on the question presented. And, the related issue of
how to defne “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.
  Justice Kavanaugh, with whom The Chief Justice
and Justice Alito join, dissenting.
  The Racketeer Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,
known as RICO, provides that any “person injured in his
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)             625

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

business or property by reason of a violation” of the Act
“shall recover threefold the damages he sustains.” 

(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, 

, 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, 

 (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-defned meanings in tort law: They mean the invasion
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 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
626          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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 fnancial
loss, it could have enacted a statute referring to injury generally, without any restrictive language.” Grogan v. Platt,
Page Proof Pending Publication

 (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 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 601. But
the Court then declines to decide whether lost wages and
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)            627

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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.

Page Proof Pending
              I    Publication
   For three reasons, I conclude that RICO does not authorize suits for personal injuries even when those 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, confrm
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.
628          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

   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, 

 (2011). Therefore, to defne 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., 

(2008); see Beck v. Prupis, 

, 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, 

 (2014) (quotation marks omitted). Here, as elsewhere, when “Congress
Page Proof Pending Publication
transplants a common-law term, the `old soil' comes with it.”
United States v. Hansen, 

 (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 defned, 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, 

 (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
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)            629

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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, 

, 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
the text books of law”—and “so clearly distinguished” that
“there is no diffculty in recognizing and classifying them.”
Gridley v. Fellows, 

, 

 (1914);
see Kelley v. Boyne, 

, 

(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,

, 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
630          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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); 

(1) (2023).
But Congress instead decided to limit civil RICO suits to
plaintiffs who have been “injured in” their “business or
property.”
   More specifcally, 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
a RICO violation generally requires the defendant to have
engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity,” where “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, 

 (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).
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)           631

                   Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

   For example, negligently driving a car into a pedestrian
inficts 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.
Page Proof Pending Publication
   Therefore, a victim who suffers only a personal injury “by
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 confrm 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 anti-
632            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                       Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

trust 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, 

 (1992); see, e. g., Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff &
Associates, Inc., 

 (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, 

 (1890) (emphasis added); see Clayton Act, § 4, 

 (1914), as
amended, 

(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-fxing
Page Proof Pending Publication
case, Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co., 

(1922). There, the Court accepted that the plaintiff “was
damaged” directly by the defendants' illegal conduct—he
“lost the beneft of rates” that “he would have enjoyed” “but
for the conspiracy.” 

. 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.”

 (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
  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
                       Cite as: 

 (2025)                    633

                        Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

   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 property interest as traditionally understood. See Chattanooga
Foundry, 

; Gerli v. Silk Assn. of Am.,

 (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.” 

, 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, 

 (Mont. 1967).
In Hamman, the plaintiffs had tried to evade the personal-injury exclusion by contending that their property damage
Page Proof Pending Publication
from a personal injury itself qualifed as a distinct property
injury for purposes of the antitrust laws. 

.
Under the antitrust laws, however, that argument does not
suffce, which is presumably why the Reiter Court cited
Hamman as exactly the kind of personal-injury suit that the
it. Ante, at 607, 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. Specifcally, the fxed rates in Keogh were
fled with and approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission. 

. The plaintiff suffered no “legal” “[i]njury” from rates elevated by price-fxing because the regulator-approved rate was the “legal
rate.” 

. 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, 

 (1906)) make clear. That is why this
Court has continued to reaffrm Keogh, going so far as to repeatedly call
it “settled law.” Square D Co. v. Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau, Inc.,

, 415–417, 420, 422, 424 (1986); see, e. g., South Branch LLC
v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 

, 650–652 (CA7 2022) (applying
Keogh's defnition to civil RICO).
634            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                        Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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
defned “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
   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, 

. Those antitrust precedents
therefore strongly buttress the conclusion that RICO excludes personal-injury torts, regardless of what kinds of
Page Proof Pending Publication
losses or damages ensue. See, e. g., Gause v. Philip Morris,

, *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

  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
curiam opinion from the 1960s. Ante, at 606–607. But the frst rule is
just the holding of Reiter, which specifcally 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, 

 (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., 

, 659–660 (1961) (per curiam) (quotation
marks omitted).
                       Cite as: 

 (2025)                   635

                       Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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 signifcantly
alter the federal-state balance absent “exceedingly clear language” from Congress. Sackett v. EPA, 

(2023) (quotation marks omitted); see, e. g., Gregory v. Ashcroft, 

 (1991). If RICO covered 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.
Page Proof Pending Publication
   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
  3
   RICO authorizes both criminal prosecutions and civil actions by the
Government regardless of whether there has been any business or property injury. See 

(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, 

 (2016).
636          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

plaintiff could cast as a “pattern” of racketeering activity.

(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., 

 (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, 

(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 farreaching importance,” and an “intention to disturb the balance is not lightly to be imputed to Congress.” Hunt v.
Page Proof Pending Publication
Crumboch, 

 (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 infict 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., 

 (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, 

.

                               II
  To sum up so far: When civil RICO employed the language
“injured in his business or property, ” it broke no new
                    Cite as: 

 (2025)             637

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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 fnancial consequences like lost
wages or medical expenses. After all, most personal injuries generate those downstream fnancial consequences. So
if RICO were interpreted in that way, it would federalize
signifcant 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.
Page Proof Pending Publication
   The Court's key mistake, in my view, is to employ an
ordinary-meaning defnition 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
638            MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                        Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

of “injured” and that the traditional tort-law understanding of injury does not carry over to RICO. Ante, at 603.
I am mystifed 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., 

 (1922) (quotation marks
omitted); see, e. g., Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works
v. Atlanta, 

, 398–399 (1906); Ziglar v. Abbasi,

 (2017); Alabama Power Co. v. Ickes, 

 (1938); Taylor v. Carryl, 

(1858).
   After reviewing a single dictionary defnition 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 603. But the Court's
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 defnition 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

  4
   Meanwhile, the Court's cited defnition for “injury in his property” is
nearly identical to this Court's test for “injured in his property” in anti-trust, 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, 

, 398–399 (either “injury to property” or “a payment of money wrongfully induced”).
                      Cite as: 

 (2025)                 639

                      Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

   Simply put, the Court's attempt to fnd 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 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 defnition of injured refers
to the same thing as damages in this statute, the Court simply redefnes “damages” not to mean losses, but rather to
mean only “monetary redress” to be paid for the losses.
Ante, at 603–604.
Page Proof Pending Publication
   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
defnition—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
640             MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                         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
defnition 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 defned—the violation of a legal right
in his business or property. Keogh, 

. Civil
RICO allows a person to “recover damages” if the damages

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
Page Proof Pending Publication
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.” 

. If a person “purchase[s] or sell[s] any security at a price 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 specifcally 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, 

 (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,

 (1907) (“an action brought in 1899 to recover damages
claimed to have been sustained in consequence of specifed false and fraudulent representations”); Great Northern R. Co. v. Sullivan, 

 (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., 

 (1954) (“the recovery of
damages caused by tortious conduct”).
                       Cite as: 

 (2025)                     641

                        Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

result from a business or property injury, but not if the damages result from a personal injury. Id., at 162.6

                                     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
601; see ante, at 604–606. 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., 

 (1979). The Court seizes in particular on the word
“harm,” which is not in the RICO statute. The Court says
Page Proof Pending Publication
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
   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 activity.” Ante, at 602, 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 defned somewhere
else—and so they are, by “general common-law” tort principles of “legal
injury.” Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 

(2008).
642             MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                        Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

say an injury.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 7, Comment d.7
   Moreover, contrary to the Court's telling, multiple civil
RICO precedents confrm 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., 

(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-
   7
     The Court also cites an extraterritoriality case, Yegiazaryan v.
Smagin, 

 (2023). But its reading of that case is puzzling.
Page Proof Pending Publication
Yegiazaryan held that we must apply the presumption against extraterritoriality, rather than a specifc rule from the First Restatement of Confict
of Laws, to determine whether and to what extent RICO applies abroad.
In other words, rather than any particular confict-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.” 

 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, 

 (2011).
   8
     The Court quotes Bridge but omits the frst 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. 

 (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. 

 (emphasis
added).
                       Cite as: 

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                       Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

established common law” principles. 

, 500–501,
506 (2000).9
  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 601.
Under this Court's precedents, more is certainly required.
Specifcally, 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 diffcult 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
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, 

 (1992); see also,
e. g., Willard v. Moneta Bldg. Supply, Inc., 

,

 (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.

  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, 

, 266–
267 (1992) (relying on Associated Gen. Contractors of Cal., Inc. v. Carpenters, 

, 531–534 (1983)); see also Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply
Corp., 

 (2006); Hemi Group, LLC v. City of New York,

 (2010).
644          MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

   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 (personal injury). See generally W. Loyd, Actions Arising Out
of Injury to Both Person and Property, 

(1912); contra, ante, at 609, 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 perPage Proof Pending Publication
sonal 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 frst. 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 599, 609. Under that supposed bar, RICO would “implicitly” exclude any business or
property injuries whenever they follow a personal injury.
Ante, at 599. 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.
                  Cite as: 

 (2025)           645

                   Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

   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 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 profts after a personal injury “unless the harm to
the business was intended”); contra, ante, at 601. And when
Page Proof Pending Publication
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, 

.
   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 per-
646             MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                        Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

sonal 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.,

 (1979) (“Money, of course, is a form of property”). Therefore, plaintiffs could 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
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 signifcant cascading effects on the American economy and federal
and state court systems. American businesses facing novel
RICO suits with treble damages would incur signifcantly
increased litigation exposure and corresponding settlement
pressure. Their insurance premiums would rise. And all
  10
     Plaintiff Horn says that his rule is consistent with the Ninth Circuit's.
But in Diaz v. Gates, the Ninth Circuit specifcally rejected confating
“mere loss of something of value (such as wages) with injury to a property
interest (such as the right to earn wages).” 

, 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.
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)           647

                   Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

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.
   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 613. The
Court instead suggests that lost wages (as distinct from lost
profts) may not necessarily be a business loss, and pecuniary
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 backflls 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 612; see Hemi
648         MEDICAL MARIJUANA, INC. v. HORN

                   Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

Group, LLC v. City of New York, 

 (2010); Anza
v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 

 (2006); Holmes
v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 

,
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. Ante, at 612–613. And the
Court notes that RICO does not allow suits for a single tort,
but requires a “pattern of racketeering activity.” Ante,
at 613.
   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 signifcant realworld question spawned by its expansive statutory interpretation: can civil RICO plaintiffs claim lost wages and medical
expenses as business or property injuries? Lower courts
Page Proof Pending Publication
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 608. 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.
                   Cite as: 

 (2025)            649

                    Kavanaugh, J., dissenting

                         …
   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
context. And the Court's failure to decide the lost-wages
and medical-expenses questions will undoubtedly produce
signifcant 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.




Page Proof Pending Publication
                           Reporter’s Note

  The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
Page Proof Pending Publication
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant
punctuation. The following additional edits were made:

None