Within months of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin, 599 U.S. 533, 143 S. Ct. 1900, L.Ed. 2d (2023), expanding the scope of extraterritorial application of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a significant number of federal appellate courts applied the new precedent with impressive speed, thoroughness, and consistency. In doing so, the Courts of Appeals have, to paraphrase the familiar theme of the introduction to the “Star Trek” series, expanded the scope of RICO into terrain in which older decisions had not dared to tread.
One among many examples is the Ninth Circuit’s detailed decision in Global Master International Group v. Esmond Natural, 76 F. 4th 1266 (9th Cir. 2023), an opinion reversing a district court determination that would have been perfectly conventional in the era before Yegiazaryan by concluding that the events at issue did not involve a domestic injury that would justify RICO’s extraterritorial application.
