Commercial Litigation and Arbitration

RICO: Injury to Credit Score Is Not RICO Injury to Business or Property

Injury to credit score is a “generalized reputational harm[ that is] too speculative to constitute an injury to business or property.”  Alphas Co. of New York Inc. v. Hunts Point Terminal, 2017 WL 1929506  at *4 (S.D.N.Y. May 9, 2017).  Accord:

  • Angermeier v. Cohen 14 F. Supp. 3d 134,152 (“an adverse entry in a personal consumer credit report, by itself, does not constitute an injury to business or property.”);  
  • Kimm v. Chang Hoon Lee and Champ, Inc., 196 Fed. Appx. 14, 16 (2d Cir. 2006)  “generalized reputational harms …, including the risk of future lost business commissions, are too speculative to constitute an injury to business or property”); 
  • Macauley v. Estate of Nicholas, 7 F. Supp. 3d 468, 479–80 (E.D. Pa. 2014) (“The loss of creditworthiness, without more, is simply not enough to confer RICO standing”)
  • Walter v. Palisades Collection, LLC, 480 F.Supp.2d 797, 805 (E.D. Pa. 2007) (“Injury to one's credit score is analogous to injury to one's reputation, and is not actionable”); 
  • Summerfield v. Strategic Lending Corp., 2010 WL 1337726, at *2–3 (N.D.Cal. Apr. 2, 2010) (no RICO standing from “damage[ ] ... [to] his credit score”) (report and recommendation); 
  • Warnock v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 2008 WL 4594129, at *4 (S.D. Miss. Oct. 14, 2008) (“[D]amage to [a] plaintiff’s credit score ... is speculative and not properly recoverable in the instant [civil RICO] action”).

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