RICO Lawsuit Dismissed
Read the Opinion Granting Motion to Dismiss
Federal judge dismisses lawsuit alleging client engaged in criminal "harboring" by renting apartments to illegal aliens.
The case of Maribel Delrio-Mocci, et al. v. Connolly Properties, Inc. et al, a civil case alleging violations of the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), has drawn national media attention for its ripple affect on landlords nationwide. The plaintiffs, including the defendants’ former employee, a former tenant and two current tenants, alleged that the defendants, by renting apartments to individuals whom they allegedly knew to be in the United States illegally, had violated the prohibition of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) against harboring and encouraging or inducing illegal aliens to remain in the United States. Since a violation of the INA constitutes a predicate act of racketeering activity under the Civil RICO statute, the plaintiffs claimed that the defendants had violated RICO’s conspiracy provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1962.
Lawyers from the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), a conservative public interest group based in Washington, D.C., obtained leave of Court to appear on the plaintiffs’ behalf. The IRLI has led an aggressive, nationwide litigation effort to suppress supposed injustice arising out of unlawful immigration in the United States.
In this case, an adverse decision would have required New Jersey landlords to police each applicant’s immigration status—effectively rendering the landlords to be de-facto Immigration Officers. Consequently, a proverbial "who's who" of national and local immigration rights groups filed Amicus briefs in support of our client's Motion to Dismiss. These groups included the Latin American Coalition, the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, CATA-The Farmworkers' Support Committee, the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
After successfully convincing the Court to dismiss the plaintiffs’ case for failing to state a claim, and after the plaintiffs had already filed an original complaint and two amended complaints seeking to cure what the defense had vigorously claimed were fatal pleading deficiencies, the Court denied the plaintiffs’ Motion for Reconsideration on September 16, 2009. In doing so, the Court declared that the plaintiffs had not “pointed to any changes in the law, the existence of new evidence, or a clear error of law or fact made by the Court.” Accordingly, the Court, reasoning that “Plaintiff’s three bites at the apple are sufficient,” denied the paintiffs' request for leave to file another amended pleading and dismissed the RICO claim, against all defendants, with prejudice.
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