Much Ado About RICO

Our Oregon lawyers have been fielding many questions regarding a recent civil RICO complaint filed in the federal court in Portland, Oregon styled as McCart v. Beddow et al. This case was filed on the heels of the Safe Streets decision out of Colorado that we discussed recently, and was clearly heavily influenced by that decision. You will recall that in Safe Streets, the Tenth Circuit allowed a private civil RICO action by a neighbor of a cannabis grow operation to survive a motion to dismiss.

As a reminder, RICO is a federal statute that provides for a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization (in addition to criminal penalties). It has become fashionable for meddlesome neighbors to bring these lawsuits against cannabis operators and their business affiliates. Because RICO complaints sound in federal law and implicate supply chain defendants, these cases differ from your ordinary nuisance-and-tresspass actions, which pursue only the marijuana grower itself, and also have been recently brought against Oregon marijuana growers.

Though McCart shares many similarities to the facts in Safe Streets, it is the differences that make things interesting. These differences let us tease out a couple of lessons for other cannabis companies seeking to avoid a similar lawsuit.

RICO claims against neighboring cannabis grow operations

First the similarities: Plaintiffs in both suits are bringing RICO claims against neighboring cannabis grow operations and alleging direct injuries to plaintiffs’ properties in the form of noxious odors that allegedly reduce property values. They also allege the mere presence of a “criminal enterprise” next door decreases property values.

But McCart is not Safe Streets. Taking the McCart complaint on its face, the direct operators of the neighboring grow operation are alleged to have gone out of their way to intentionally provoke the Plaintiffs at every turn. This isn’t just a case about noxious odors and neighboring criminal enterprises (although it is that); rather, the Plaintiffs are asserting this case is the culmination of a bitter dispute between neighbors in which cannabis is more of an extra than a star.

Specifically, the McCart Plaintiffs allege that:

• The defendant cannabis growers menaced Plaintiffs and “made obscene gestures” and “screamed obscenities” at Plaintiffs;
• The grow operation increased traffic on a shared driveway by an excessive amount;
• The Defendants caused direct injuries to the property by leaving tire tracks on Plaintiffs’ property;
• The Defendants revved their car engines when they saw Plaintiffs outside;
• The Defendants “discharge firearms for extended periods”;
• The Defendants frequently “blast the air horn of their dump truck”;
• The Defendants damaged the shared driveway and at times blocked it; and
• The Defendants littered on Plaintiffs’ property.

Whether these allegations are true will be Plaintiffs’ burden to prove. However, two immediate lessons come to mind:

Lesson 1: To paraphrase Wil Wheaton: don’t be a jerk. Be a good neighbor. If the McCart allegations are true, the behavior of these growers reflects poorly on the entire industry. If you want to be treated like a serious business, act like one. Recognize the precarious legal situation afforded by inane prohibition policies, and strive to be ideal neighbors.

Lesson 2: Control the odors. The Safe Street court found that the cannabis smell released by the Colorado grow op was enough to assert a claim for RICO damages. You should do everything you can to minimize odors on your businesses.

But what about the other McCart defendants?

Like in Safe Streets, the McCart plaintiffs seem to have sued everyone even tangentially related to their hated neighbors, including cannabis dispensaries that just happened to stock the neighbors’ products. These “Dispensary Defendants” are probably in much better shape than the growers.

A civil RICO claim under 18 U.S.C. Section 1962(c) (at issue in both Safe Streets and McCart) requires a plaintiff prove:

• The existence of an enterprise affecting interstate or foreign commerce;
• The specific defendant was employed by or associated with the enterprise;
• The specific defendant conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise’s affairs;
• The specific defendant’s participation was through a pattern of racketeering activity; and
• Plaintiff’s business or property was injured by reason of defendant’s conducting or participating in the conduct of the enterprise’s affairs.

In Reves v. Ernst & Young, the US Supreme Court held that the language of 1962(c) requires the defendant have “participated in the operation or management of the enterprise itself.” (page 183). There are a few out of jurisdiction cases that have held that mere business relationships and supplier-purchaser relationships are insufficient to establish RICO liability, even with knowledge of the illegal activity. If you are curious, take a look at In re Mastercard Intl. Inc., (page 487) and Arenson v. Whitehall Convalescent & Nursing Home, Inc. It seems unlikely the Dispensary Defendants in this case had anything to do with operating or managing the enterprise. They appear to have merely been customers, in which case they shouldn’t have liability here.

Though there is a dispensary defendant in Safe Streets, the Tenth Circuit appears to have found the conduct requirement was met because the Safe Streets defendants admitted they all “‘agreed to grow marijuana for sale’ at the facility adjacent to the [plaintiffs’] property.” The Safe Streets dispensary defendant was directly involved in operating the specific grow operation at issue. This is not the same thing as an innocent dispensary accepting product from a third-party farm.

The Law

RICO law is complex, but as a general matter the RICO statutes allow a plaintiff to recover treble damages in a civil claim if the plaintiff can prove the following:

• The existence of an “enterprise” affecting interstate or foreign commerce;
• The specific defendant was employed by or associated with the enterprise;
• The specific defendant conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise’s affairs;
• The specific defendant’s participation was through a pattern of racketeering activity; and
• Plaintiff’s business or property was injured by reason of defendant’s conducting or participating in the conduct of the enterprise’s affairs.

Of course, the devil is in the details, as the Dispensary Defendants point out in their motion to dismiss.

The Amended Complaint

The plaintiffs filed their amended complaint on September 1, which added 95 paragraphs onto their hefty original complaint. The amended complaint adds many new defendants, including employees at the farms and it alleges that nearly all of the defendants were exporting product out of Oregon.

In broad terms, the plaintiffs’ claims against the Dispensary Defendants have not changed in that they still allege the following:

1. The cannabis grow operation (“Marijuana Operation”) is an enterprise affecting interstate commerce, as defined in the RICO statutes;
2. All of the defendants were associated with and conducted the Marijuana Operation’s affairs through racketeering activity;
3. Plaintiffs suffered a variety of kinds of harm as a result of the Marijuana Operation:
   1. Physical Injury to Real Property: littering, driveway damage, tire tracks, damage to some trail cameras, and unreasonable use of easements.
   2. Diminution of Property Value: noise pollution, light pollution, vibration, odors, exhaust fumes.
   3. Personal Injuries: harassment and damage to plaintiffs’ use and quiet enjoyment of their property.

The Motions to Dismiss

Eighteen Dispensary Defendants joined together in a single motion asking the Court to throw out plaintiff’s entire case against them. Their motion is well worth the read, not least for its colorful language, such as the lipstick-on-a-pig quote below the pig picture above. The arguments in this motion fit into two general categories:

The Dispensary Defendants are not part of a racketeering enterprise.

To establish an “enterprise” exists for RICO purposes, plaintiffs must show there was an ongoing organization with a common purpose. Both of these elements get to the same idea: a criminal enterprise is a group of people all working together to enrich themselves. Courts have found “ongoing organizations” among disparate businesses when there are legitimate interconnections between the entities, such as similar ownership and overlap in personnel. Similarly, courts have found a common purpose where the alleged members are working to promote a single economic interest, and not where they are simply pursuing individual economic interests. There don’t appear to be any of these kinds of links in this case. The Dispensary Defendants appear to be owned, operated, and staffed by distinct individuals working towards their own individual business purposes. This ties back to our initial read of this case: mere supplier-purchaser relationships like these do not rise to the level of RICO enterprises.

In any event, plaintiffs need to establish that the Dispensary Defendants were associated with and conducted or participated in the enterprise. Yet plaintiffs have not alleged that the Dispensary Defendants had any say over the operation of the farms. Their case against the Dispensary Defendants will likely die here.

Plaintiffs’ alleged harms cannot be recovered as a matter of law.

Even assuming plaintiffs can get over the hurdle of establishing that the Dispensary Defendants directed the farms, plaintiffs still must establish that their specific harms are actionable. The Dispensary Defendants also seem to be on the right side of the law here, arguing that the alleged harms and the speculative claim that the value of plaintiffs’ home has decreased cannot form the basis of a RICO claim against any of the defendants and cannot form the basis of a state-law claim nuisance claim against the Dispensary Defendants, in particular.

The plaintiffs face a number of legal obstacles that seem insurmountable. First and foremost, Oregon has long since decided that it is in the best interests of the state to protect farming uses and it has decided to treat cannabis the same as any other farm crop. Accordingly, Oregon’s Right to Farm Act likely bars plaintiffs’ nuisance and trespass claims for damages based on odors, noise pollution, light pollution, vibrations, and smoke fumes. The Dispensary Defendants rely on ORS 30.936(1), which provides farmers in farming areas with immunity from suit for any trespass or nuisance claims, defined elsewhere as claims “based on noise, vibration, odors, smoke, dust, mist from irrigation, use of pesticides and use of crop production substances.” Since RICO case law suggests that harms to property interests should be determined by state law, plaintiffs’ diminution of value claims are likely dead on arrival.

In any event, plaintiffs’ specific diminution of value claims are likely too speculative. The Dispensary Defendants argue that a RICO plaintiff must plead and prove that plaintiff has suffered a “concrete financial loss” but that plaintiffs’ complaint only contains pure guesswork that the odors, etc. diminished the value of plaintiffs’ property. Even if the plaintiffs could plead a specific dollar amount of diminished value, Oregon law bars claims for diminution of property value if the nuisance can be stopped. In other words, if the harm would disappear if the grow operations shut down, plaintiffs cannot recover damages for loss of value. Instead, plaintiffs should be asking the court to shut down the grow operations, which would have little to no effect on the Dispensary Defendants.

Plaintiffs will also likely fail on their claims for loss of quiet enjoyment and harassment because personal injuries like these are not compensable under RICO.

Confidential settlement agreement

The first, McCart v. Beddow, appears to have settled pursuant to a confidential settlement agreement. The second, Ainsworth et. al. v. Owenby et. al., is just getting started. The common thread here is that the pro se (self-represented) plaintiff in McCart v. Beddow, is an attorney who is now representing the plaintiffs in Ainsworth.

Due to this common thread, we think we can draw some likely conclusions about the contents of the confidential McCart settlement from the issues raised in the Ainsworth complaint. Note that the Ainsworth complaint was filed just about two months after the McCart defendants filed their motions to dismiss. As discussed below, it is clear that the Ainsworth complaint learned some valuable lessons from the motions to dismiss. Let’s engage in a bit of idle speculation:

Dispensaries can breathe a sigh of relief.

The McCart lawsuit named each and every OLCC licensed retailer that purchased the defendant farm’s product. In sharp contrast, the Ainsworth complaint doesn’t name any such “dispensary defendants.” Given that one of the goals of these RICO cases is to get a windfall under RICO’s treble damages clause, it is probably safe to assume that the McCart dispensary defendants didn’t end up being a pot of gold at the end of the RICO rainbow. Perhaps the attorney now agrees with our initial assessment: “It seems unlikely the Dispensary Defendants in this case had anything to do with operating or managing the enterprise. They appear to have merely been customers, in which case they shouldn’t have liability here.” This suggests that dispensaries are unlikely to be targets of future RICO suits based on the conduct of their suppliers.

The protections of ORS 30.936 (Right to Farm Act) played an important role in the McCart settlement negotiations.

As we explained in a previous entry in this series:

“ORS 30.936(1) . . . provides farmers in farming areas with immunity from suit for any trespass or nuisance claims, defined elsewhere as claims ‘based on noise, vibration, odors, smoke, dust, mist from irrigation, use of pesticides and use of crop production substances.’ Since RICO case law suggests that harms to property interests should be determined by state law, plaintiffs’ diminution of value claims are likely dead on arrival.”

The Ainsworth complaint takes pains to avoid the protections of 30.936. For example, paragraph 91 reads:

“Defendants are not entitled to ‘right to farm’ immunity pursuant to ORS 30.936 because Defendants’ use of the [Defendant] Property does not comply with applicable laws. For example, the [Defendant] Property is zoned ‘rural residential’ and therefore Defendants’ use of the [Defendant] property to produce and process marijuana commercially violates Linn County Ordinance 940.400(A) and 940.500(A).”

Plaintiffs are correct that Ordinances 940.400 and 940.500 appear to bar marijuana production on the Defendants’ property, but that only suggests that Defendants must have been grandfathered in when Chapter 940 (Marijuana Code) was adopted. Otherwise, they presumably would not have been able to receive state authorization to cultivate cannabis. If the Defendants’ use was grandfathered in, then the Ainsworth trespass and nuisance claims should still be barred by ORS 30.937, which extends the farming immunity to any “preexisting nonconforming use” as a farm.

Lessons Learned

We can pull a few new lessons from the Ainsworth complaint:

• Avoid smoke. The Ainsworth complaint alleges that the Defendants regularly burned cannabis debris in their yard, causing smoke to trespass onto their neighbors’ property. Producers seeking to avoid similar lawsuits should think twice before lighting bonfires.
• Limit noise. The Ainsworth plaintiffs complain of the noise caused by the industrial fans in the defendants’ greenhouses. Producers would be wise to take any reasonable steps to limit noise pollution.
• Try to limit traffic. Both McCart and Ainsworth complained about the increased traffic caused by the cannabis farm at all hours of the night. It seems the ideal farm will have direct access to a major road instead of access through residential roads. Barring that, producers should at least try to limit after-hours traffic.
• Don’t live next to a county commissioner. One of the plaintiffs is Linn County Commissioner John Lindsey. One would expect that Mr. Lindsey will recuse himself from any future attempts to rewrite Linn County’s cannabis ordinances.

The Ainsworth defendants have only recently lawyered up, so it may be a few weeks before we can see their answer to these charges.

Multi-State Update

Today, we have an update on two marijuana RICO cases elsewhere the country, one in Colorado, and the other in Massachusetts.

Colorado

In a previous post, we discussed Safe Streets Alliance v. Alternative Holistic Healing, LLC, a case from Colorado. This case is notable because the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals has already issued an opinion addressing several key legal issues, giving the litigants the go-ahead to try their case. In dicta, the 10th Circuit noted that at trial, it was possible that a judge or jury would determine that the plaintiff’s land was actually more valuable because of its suitability for cannabis cultivation. Although the 10^th Circuit’s opinion only technically applies in the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, other trial and appellate courts will consider the opinion as “persuasive” authority, in other RICO cases.

This case is now scheduled for trial beginning in late August 2018. Assuming this case does not settle, and regardless of the verdict, the result will likely have far-reaching impact on potential RICO actions nationwide. As to the trial itself, many issues will be raised, from admissibility of evidence to expert testimony. One or more of those issues will likely be appealed again to the 10^th Circuit. Future litigants are likely to use the trial record as a guide to bringing and defending these RICO cases.

Massachusetts

In Crimson Galeria v. Healthy Pharms, the plaintiff, a Harvard Square property owner, claims that Healthy Pharms, a neighbor and prospective cannabis operation, will diminish the value of plaintiffs’ property. As claimed in the lawsuit, “amongst other matters, marijuana businesses make bad neighbors, which include without limitation, emitting pungent odors, attracting undesirable visitors, increasing criminal activity, driving down property values, and limiting the rental of premises.” As with the Safe Streets case, one wonders whether suitability for cannabis sale actually increases the value of the land.

The lawsuit also alleges that local and state government agencies, including the state Department of Public Health and the city of Cambridge are “facilitating and encouraging violations of the federal drug laws by licensing and permitting marijuana businesses.” One of the plaintiffs’ claims is that the federal Controlled Substance Act (CSA) “preempts the practice of state and local officials in Massachusetts of issuing licenses to operate marijuana businesses.” The 10^th Circuit addressed similar preemption arguments, ultimately finding that the plaintiffs had no claims on which relief could be granted. But Massachusetts is in the 1^st Circuit Court of Appeals, and the 1^st Circuit judges will not be bound by the Safe Streets opinion (although they almost certainly will consider it).

It is at least theoretically possible that the 1^st Circuit could find differently than the 10^th Circuit, causing a circuit split that would have to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.