United States v. James Scott Pendergraft

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that, absent intent to deceive the victim, “mailing of litigation documents, even perjurious ones, did not violate the mail-fraud statute”
• holding threats to sue a public entity cannot constitute Hobbs Act extortion, even where sup- ported by false testimony and fabricated evidence
• holding that neither the threat to litigate nor the fabrication of evidence behind the threat of a lawsuit made the action “wrongful” within the meaning of the Hobbs Act, and, thus, could not be a predicate act under RICO
• noting that a video of a civil settlement negotiation in which the appellants participated was admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 408 in the appellants’ criminal cases
• vacating a general verdict for a multiple-object conspiracy on the ground that one of the conspiracy theories was contrary to law
• “[P]rosecuting litigation activities as federal crimes would undermine the policies of access and finality that animate our legal system.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).