No Antecedent‑Personal‑Injury Bar Under Civil RICO: Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn

Introduction

In Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn, 604 U.S. ___ (2025), the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a deep circuit split over whether a plaintiff may recover under civil RICO for business or property losses that arise because of, or are downstream from, a personal injury. The Court held that §1964(c) of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) does not impose a categorical “antecedent-personal-injury” bar: a plaintiff may seek treble damages for business or property harms even if those harms resulted from a personal injury.

The dispute arose from a commercial truck driver’s purchase of a CBD tincture, “Dixie X,” advertised as containing 0% THC. After testing positive for THC on a random drug screen, the driver—Douglas Horn—was fired when he declined to participate in a substance abuse program. Horn sued the producers and sellers of Dixie X (collectively “Medical Marijuana”) under civil RICO, alleging a pattern of mail and wire fraud. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants, reasoning that his job loss derived from a personal injury (ingesting THC) and was thus unrecoverable under §1964(c). The Second Circuit reversed, rejecting the antecedent-personal-injury bar. The Supreme Court affirmed.

Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson. Justice Jackson concurred. Justice Thomas dissented (urging dismissal as improvidently granted). Justice Kavanaugh dissented, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Alito.

Summary of the Opinion

Holding: Section 1964(c) permits recovery for harms to “business or property” even when those harms result from a personal injury; RICO does not contain a categorical bar on derivative business or property losses arising from personal injury.
Textual core: The Court reads “injured” in §1964(c) according to its ordinary meaning—“harmed” or “damaged.” The statute restricts the types of harms recoverable (business or property) but does not restrict recovery based on the cause of those harms (e.g., whether they stem from a personal injury).
What the Court did not decide:
- Whether Horn suffered a personal injury by ingesting THC.
- Whether “business” in §1964(c) includes “employment.”
- What “injured in his…property” comprehensively means.
Constraints remain: The Court emphasized RICO’s demanding causal requirement (“by reason of” = a direct relationship between the predicate acts and the injury) and RICO’s pattern requirement (two or more related predicate acts with continuity). It noted Horn faces “a heavy burden on remand” on proximate cause.
Bottom line: The Second Circuit’s rejection of the antecedent-personal-injury bar is affirmed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.

Analysis

Precedents Cited and How They Shaped the Decision

Sedima, S.P.R.L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479 (1985): The Court quoted Sedima’s statement that the compensable injury under RICO is the “harm” caused by predicate acts. Sedima also rejected importing an “antitrust injury”-type requirement into RICO; a plaintiff need not allege a special “racketeering injury,” only harm to business or property caused by predicate acts. This undergirds the majority’s ordinary-meaning, harm-centered approach to “injured.”
Holmes v. SIPC, 503 U.S. 258 (1992); Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply, 547 U.S. 451 (2006); Hemi Group v. City of New York, 559 U.S. 1 (2010): These cases are cited for RICO’s “by reason of” proximate cause standard, requiring a direct relation between predicate acts and the injury—not mere foreseeability. The majority relies on these to stress existing guardrails that will continue to cabin RICO claims (and may sink Horn’s on remand).
Yegiazaryan v. Smagin, 599 U.S. 533 (2023): On the question of how to locate a “domestic injury” under §1964(c), the Court previously rejected rigid common-law situs rules and adopted a contextual approach. The Horn majority finds Medical Marijuana’s tort-centric “legal injury” approach in tension with Yegiazaryan’s resistance to importing common-law constructs that do not comfortably fit §1964(c)’s text and structure.
RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, 579 U.S. 325 (2016): RJR confirms two points relevant here: civil RICO and the Clayton Act are not “interchangeable,” and §1964(c)’s phrase “business or property” excludes personal injuries. The Horn majority uses RJR to reject a one-to-one transplant of antitrust-specific standards (like “antitrust injury”) into RICO.
Apple Inc. v. Pepper, 587 U.S. 273 (2019); Radiant Burners, Inc. v. Peoples Gas, 364 U.S. 656 (1961): The Court invokes these antitrust cases to show that even in antitrust, the Court has not demanded that a plaintiff’s “injury” map onto a distinct common-law tort. They support reading “injured” to cover harm rather than a specialized invasion-of-rights requirement.
Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl–O–Mat, 429 U.S. 477 (1977); ARCO v. USA Petroleum, 495 U.S. 328 (1990): These decisions created and applied “antitrust injury” doctrine—a cause-of-action-specific gloss the Court in Sedima declined to import into RICO. Horn reaffirms that refusal.
H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell, 492 U.S. 229 (1989): RICO’s pattern requirement—relationship plus continuity—remains a significant constraint; a single tort does not make a civil RICO case.
Turkette, 452 U.S. 576 (1981): Defines “enterprise,” which Horn alleged existed among the defendants in producing and selling Dixie X. Not central to the holding, but background.

Legal Reasoning

1) Text and Ordinary Meaning

Section 1964(c) authorizes suit by “[a]ny person injured in his business or property.” The majority reads “injured” in its ordinary sense—“harmed” or “damaged”—rather than as a specialized term of art requiring an invasion of a common-law “legal right.” That reading naturally fits §1964(c)’s structure: Congress explicitly limited recoverable harms to business or property (and thus implicitly excluded bodily/personal harms), but it did not limit recovery based on the source of those harms. The majority’s gas-station example captures the point: a robbery victim cannot recover pain-and-suffering under RICO, but if the injuries force the station to close, the lost business is recoverable as “injured in his business.”

2) “Damages” Means Monetary Redress, Not Evidence of a Term of Art

Medical Marijuana argued that “injured” must have a different, specialized (tort-law) meaning because §1964(c) also uses the word “damages.” The majority rejects that premise: “damages” in §1964(c) refers to monetary redress—i.e., a plaintiff may recover “threefold the [monetary] damages he sustains.” That usage readily coexists with an ordinary-meaning understanding of “injured” as “harmed.”

3) Statutory Context and RICO Case Law Use “Injury,” “Harm,” and “Loss” Interchangeably

Across RICO decisions (Sedima, Anza, Hemi Group, Holmes, Bridge), the Court has treated “injury,” “harm,” and related loss-terms as interchangeable. Reading “injured” to mean “harmed” is consistent with how the Court has actually spoken about civil RICO.

4) Rejecting a Tort-Centric, “Legal Injury” Filter

The Court identifies serious administrability problems with pegging civil RICO’s “injury” to an antecedent “invasion of a legal right” as defined by state tort law or a generalized common law:

Which law governs (plaintiff’s domicile, place of racketeering acts, enterprise’s locus)? Choice-of-law morass.
Many RICO predicates have no neat tort analogs (e.g., harboring undocumented immigrants, trafficking in counterfeit labels).
“General tort law” is neither static nor uniform; where no majority rule exists, courts would lack a principled anchor.
Defendants’ own hypotheticals concede recovery in scenarios (kidnapping ransom; password extortion leading to bank account draining; trafficking victims’ economic losses) that, under a rigid antecedent-personal-injury bar, would be inexplicable.

5) Antitrust Is Not a Blueprint for RICO

Although RICO borrowed language from the Clayton Act, modern precedent (especially RJR Nabisco and Sedima) rejects conflating the two regimes. RICO has no “antitrust injury” counterpart, and the Court declines to import antitrust’s cause-of-action-specific doctrines or a tort-analogue filter into §1964(c).

6) Existing RICO Constraints Do the Work

The Court underscores that allowing recovery for business or property harms that derive from personal injuries will not “eviscerate” §1964(c)’s limitation because:

Proximate cause is demanding (“direct relation” required; foreseeability alone is insufficient).
A “pattern of racketeering activity” must be pleaded and proven; a single tort does not suffice.
Not all losses fit within “business” or “property,” and those terms themselves may be narrower than litigants assume.

If civil RICO’s breadth is still too great, the Court repeats Sedima’s admonition: “correction must lie with Congress.”

Impact

1) Immediate Doctrinal Shift: The “Antecedent-Personal-Injury Bar” Is Off the Table

The Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits’ prohibition on recovering business or property losses that flow from personal injuries cannot stand. The Second and Ninth Circuits’ approach now governs nationwide: business or property losses do not become non-recoverable merely because a personal injury came first in the causal chain.

2) What Will Still Filter Out Many Cases

Proximate cause: The Court flags the multi-step causal chain in Horn—advertising, purchase, ingestion, THC presence, drug test, refusal to participate in a program, termination—and suggests the directness requirement may be “an insurmountable obstacle.” Many personal-injury-adjacent RICO claims will founder here.
Pattern: Plaintiffs must still show two or more related predicate acts that amount to or threaten continued criminal activity. One-off torts won’t suffice.
Meaning of “business” and “property” remains unsettled: The Court pointedly did not endorse that “employment” always qualifies as “business,” or that any pecuniary loss (like medical expenses) always counts as “property.” Future cases will define these terms.

3) Likely Litigation Hot Spots and Open Questions

Lost wages: If “business” includes “employment,” plaintiffs will argue that lost wages are recoverable business harms; defendants will resist, highlighting the Court’s refusal to decide the point and emphasizing directness. Expect inconsistent early results and, ultimately, further appellate clarification.
Medical expenses and other out-of-pocket costs: Plaintiffs will frame these as “property” harms; defendants will press causation and argue that not every pecuniary outlay is “injury to property.” The Court left this open.
Employment contexts: Horn involves termination after a drug test; countless employment disputes with alleged predicate acts (e.g., mail/wire fraud) could attempt a civil RICO overlay. The majority’s caution on causation and “business” scope will be pivotal.
Human trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping scenarios: The majority’s critique of the petitioners’ hypotheticals suggests clear recoverability of business/property losses in these contexts—where the economic loss is directly linked to predicate crimes.
Forum choices and pleading strategies: Plaintiffs will experiment with characterizing economic losses as business/property harms while avoiding personal-injury labels; defendants will attack directness, pattern, and the fit within “business” or “property.”

4) Federalism/Floodgates Concerns

Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent warns that if downstream economic losses (lost wages, medical expenses) count as business/property injuries, many ordinary personal-injury torts could be re-packaged as RICO cases with treble damages—risking the federalization of state tort law. The majority counters that RICO’s built-in constraints (particularly the directness requirement) will prevent an avalanche of garden-variety tort suits.

Concurring and Dissenting Views

Justice Jackson, Concurring

Justice Jackson emphasized Congress’s instruction that RICO “shall be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes,” and viewed the majority’s rejection of atextual hurdles as consistent with that directive. Her concurrence provides an additional statutory construction reason to endorse the majority’s approach.

Justice Thomas, Dissenting

Justice Thomas would have dismissed the writ as improvidently granted. He highlighted threshold uncertainty—whether Horn even suffered a personal injury—and the parties’ inadequate briefing on the meaning of “injured in his business or property.” He criticized the Court for deciding less than the question presented and leaving the hardest issues (definitions of “business” and “property”) unresolved, predicting “substantial confusion and litigation.”

Justice Kavanaugh, Dissenting (joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Alito)

Justice Kavanaugh argued that “injured” is a longstanding tort-law term of art meaning “invasion of a legally protected interest” and that RICO’s use of “injured in his business or property” imports the personal/property/business injury distinctions from tort law. In his view:

RICO excludes personal-injury suits, and plaintiffs cannot circumvent that exclusion by reframing downstream business or property losses (lost wages, medical expenses) as independent RICO injuries.
Antitrust precedents interpreting identical “injured in business or property” language (e.g., Keogh; Reiter) confirm that “injury” means legal injury and excludes personal injury even if it causes economic losses.
The federalism canon counsels against reading RICO to federalize vast swaths of personal-injury litigation absent clear congressional instruction.
While agreeing a plaintiff can recover for an independent business/property injury even if a personal injury also occurs, he rejects the majority’s ordinary-meaning reading of “injured” and criticizes the Court for punting on whether lost wages and medical expenses are recoverable “business” or “property” harms.

Complex Concepts Simplified

RICO §1964(c): Allows private suits for treble damages by anyone “injured in his business or property” by reason of a RICO violation (which, in turn, requires a “pattern of racketeering activity”).
“Pattern of racketeering activity”: At least two predicate crimes that are related and amount to or threaten continued criminal activity.
“By reason of” (proximate cause): There must be a direct relationship between the predicate acts and the business/property injury. Foreseeability is not enough; multiple steps and actors can break the chain.
Antecedent-personal-injury bar: A now-rejected rule (in several circuits) that disallowed recovery for business or property losses if they flowed from a personal injury.
“Injury” vs. “damages” (tort vocabulary): Injury is the legally cognizable harm; damages are the monetary measure of the loss. The majority reads “injured” as ordinary “harmed,” while the Kavanaugh dissent treats “injured” as a term of art (invasion of a legal right).
Business vs. property in §1964(c): The statute limits recovery to harms to business or property; RICO does not compensate personal injuries. The precise scope of “business” (e.g., does it include all facets of “employment”?) and “property” (e.g., do medical outlays count?) remains open.
Treble damages: Successful civil RICO plaintiffs recover three times their compensatory damages, plus attorneys’ fees and costs—heightening stakes on both sides.

Practical Takeaways

No categorical bar based on an antecedent personal injury: Plaintiffs may plead business or property harms even when those harms follow from personal injury. The focus shifts to whether the alleged harm is to “business or property” and whether causation is sufficiently direct.
Expect front-loaded fights on proximate cause: Defendants will press Holmes/Anza/Hemi directness at the motion-to-dismiss and summary-judgment stages; plaintiffs will need tight causal narratives linking predicate acts to economic harm without intervening breaks.
Careful pleading of “business” and “property” is critical: Because the Court left those terms open, parties should anticipate and brief their scope. Where possible, plaintiffs will marshal authorities supporting “employment” as “business” and pecuniary outlays as “property,” while defendants will argue for narrower readings.
Pattern still matters: Isolated misconduct is not enough. Plaintiffs must identify two or more related predicate acts with continuity; defendants should challenge “pattern” rigorously.
Remedial construction vs. federalism stakes: The concurrence’s liberal-construction lens may encourage courts to read §1964(c) expansively; the dissents flag federalism and floodgates concerns that may influence how strictly lower courts apply causation and define “business” and “property.”

Conclusion

Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn establishes an important clarification: civil RICO’s “business or property” limitation restricts the type of harm recoverable, not the causal provenance of that harm. There is no categorical “antecedent-personal-injury bar.” At the same time, the Court reaffirmed robust doctrinal constraints—especially proximate cause and the pattern requirement—that will limit efforts to transform routine personal-injury disputes into treble-damages RICO suits. The opinion also deliberately leaves key boundary questions for future cases: whether “business” embraces all aspects of employment and what counts as “injury to property” (including whether lost wages and medical expenses qualify).

In the broader legal landscape, Horn resolves a long-standing circuit split and realigns civil RICO toward an ordinary-meaning, text-first approach to “injured,” while signaling that the hardest work ahead lies in defining “business,” “property,” and “directness” with care. For litigants, Horn removes one blunt defense but replaces it with a set of sharper, case-specific inquiries that will likely determine outcomes in this and many future RICO cases.