During its 2024-25 term, the United States Supreme Court will decide in Kousisis v. United States whether breaches of contract can satisfy the “property” element of the mail and wire fraud statutes. The Supreme Court should—and as attorneys David W. Shapiro and Gil Walton anticipate will—say they cannot. In “Justices Should Squash Bid To Criminalize Contract Breaches,” an expert analysis/opinion piece published in Law360, Shapiro and Walton explain how Kousisis provides the Supreme Court with a perfect vehicle to set the record straight and reject both the government’s and the Third Circuit’s view that inducing another party to enter a transaction through deception is mail or wire fraud, even where (1) the scheme did not contemplate harm to any traditional property interest and (2) the misrepresentation was not about something collateral to the contract.
Read the full article here. (Subscription may be required.)