Opinion of the Court
to the circumstances surrounding the injury. If those circumstances sufficiently ground the injury in the United States, such that it is clear the injury arose domestically, then the plaintiff has alleged a domestic injury.
Because of the contextual nature of the inquiry, no set of factors can capture the relevant considerations for all cases. RICO covers a wide range of predicate acts and is notoriously “expansive” in scope. Id., at 498–499. Thus, depending on the allegations, what is relevant in one case to assessing where the injury arose may not be pertinent in another. While a bright-line rule would no doubt be easier to apply, fealty to the statute’s focus requires a more nuanced approach.
D
This suit illustrates well why the domestic-injury inquiry must account for the facts of the case, rather than rely on a residency-based rule. While it may be true, in some sense, that Smagin has felt his economic injury in Russia, focusing solely on that fact would miss central features of the alleged injury. Zooming out, the circumstances surrounding Smagin’s injury make clear it arose in the United States.
Smagin alleges that he “has been injured in his inability to collect [his] massive judgment.” App. 38a. Much of the alleged racketeering activity that caused the injury occurred in the United States. Yegiazaryan took domestic actions to avoid collection, including allegedly creating U. S. shell companies to hide his U. S. assets, submitting a forged doctor’s note to a California District Court, and intimidating a U. S.-based witness. It is true that other components of the scheme occurred abroad. As Smagin alleges, however, even those “wrongful acts and plans were devised, initiated, and carried out … through acts and communications initiated in and directed towards Los Angeles County, California,” with the “central purpose of frustrating enforcement of [the] California judgment.” Id., at 45a–46a.
