Morgan Cloud

Six women filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein and associated companies, alleging that their coordinated efforts to cover up a pattern of egregious sexual misconduct amounts to racketeering. Successful RICO suits come with significantly higher damages, Emory Law Professor Morgan Cloud told Business Insider. "If they win, they are entitled to recover treble damages--three times their actual damages--and their costs of litigation, including attorneys' fees," he said.

"It is widely known that Donald Trump is being sued, including in class-actions--by thousands of people who charge that he defrauded them of millions of dollars," Emory Law Professors Morgan Cloud and George Shepherd write in a co-authored opinion article for the Wall Street Journal. "But there seems to be public confusion about how these lawsuits might affect the presidential campaign. Despite what Mr. Trump says, it appears likely that he will be called to the witness stand before the November election."

When prosecutors in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case used RICO laws to pursue convictions for educators, some observers cried overkill. The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act debuted in the 1970s as a means to prosecute gangsters and mob bosses. But as Emory Law Professor Morgan Cloud told the Los Angeles Times, it wasn't a stretch. "I was not surprised in the least," Cloud said. "It's sufficiently egregious, and this clearly fit within the way the RICO statute has been applied since 1970."

Professor Morgan Cloud was a guest on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, to explain the prosecution's use of Georgia's Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations laws against the educators accused in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial. A governor's blue-ribbon panel found half of the school system's elementary and middle schools were involved, Cloud said, and that the cheating scheme was "conducted and condoned, and probably enforced from the very top of the administration." The RICO Act "was most powerful legal tool available to the prosecutors, and it really fit this case beautifully," Cloud said. "It really would have been a surprise had they not used the RICO statute."