Firm Wins Important Second Circuit Appeal

The Firm’s litigation department won an important appeal in the Second Circuit.  In a highly anticipated decision of first impression with national significance, the Second Circuit adopted the first appellate-level test for a domestic injury under RICO’s new domestic injury requirement set forth by the Supreme Court in RJR Nabisco v. The European Community, 136 S. Ct. 2090 (2016).  The district court had dismissed our clients’ RICO claim on the ground that economic injuries are suffered at the place of residence, and therefore, as Chilean residents or companies owned by Chilean residents, our clients had suffered only foreign injuries.  On appeal, partners Robin Alperstein and Jesse Conan argued that the test the district court adopted wrongly focused on plaintiffs’ residency.  Instead, we contended that the inquiry should focus on the location of the injured property and that defendants’ misappropriation of assets held in New York was therefore a domestic injury. The Second Circuit agreed and reversed, holding, “Where the injury is to tangible property, we conclude that, absent some extraordinary circumstance, the injury is domestic if the plaintiff’s property was located in the United States when it was stolen or harmed, even if the plaintiff himself resides abroad.”