In an October 7, 2011 decision by Justice Demarest the court dismissed a RICO claim because after two years of discovery plaintiffs were still unable to prove the essential elements of their claim. The dispute arose from sales of luxury automobiles which were to shipped from the United States to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. One of the plaintiffs in this action, The Auto Collection, was a named defendant in over a half-dozen other cases where it was alleged that The Auto Collection took money for the cars but failed to deliver them and went out of business. The Auto Collection’s action claimed that the plaintiff purchasers in the other actions were engaged in a conspiracy to defraud The Auto Collection by, among other things, commencing baseless lawsuits against The Auto Collection.
This motion involved four of the defendants against whom The Auto Collection brought, among other things, RICO claims. The court granted those defendants’ motion to dismiss the RICO claim because: (i) plaintiffs’ allegations of predicate acts are “merely, artfully pleaded claims for malicious prosecution and cannot form the basis of a RICO claim”; (ii) plaintiffs failed to demonstrate any interstate communications because all of the alleged communications took place in New York; and (iii) the witness tampering claim under RICO alleged acts involving state court proceedings and RICO witness tampering only applies to federal proceedings.
The Auto Collection et al v. Pinkow et al., Sup Ct, Kings County, October 7, 2011, Demarest, J, Index No. 7847/09