Newly filed appeals in the Chevron-Ecuador oil pollution case have set the stage for a potentially important court decision on the reach of the federal anti-racketeering statute as a corporate tool for combating liability lawsuits. Business interests increasingly view the civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970 as a means to fight what they consider bogus suits. Litigation based on fraud, according to this view, ought to be deterred and punished under a law originally aimed at traditional organized crime syndicates. Plaintiffs' lawyers, unsurprisingly, see the trend as an ominous attempt to distort a federal statute, demonize corporate critics, and evade responsibility for misconduct. Chevron has set the standard for wielding RICO as a table-turning device. Now plaintiffs' attorney Steven Donziger has filed his expected appeal of the RICO verdict with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.