The Eighth Circuit just made owner RICO claims against associations harder to dismiss
The Eighth Circuit just made owner RICO claims against associations harder to dismiss
2026-09-09 · Arkansas · Courts
A condominium owner sued his association, its managing company, its registered agent and the association's law firm under the federal racketeering statute. The district court threw the claims out as time-barred. On November 5, 2025 the Eighth Circuit reversed.1
The case comes from Missouri, but the Eighth Circuit's decisions bind the federal district courts in Arkansas, and the rule it applies is federal law rather than state law. For Arkansas associations, managers and collection counsel, it narrows one of the standard early exits from an owner's racketeering claim.
What happened
Dennis Geivett bought a condominium in St. Louis County in 2012 and prepaid that year's monthly assessments. From January 2013 his daughter, who lived in the unit, did not receive fee notices and did not pay. What followed, on the pleadings, was a decade of collection activity:
- August 2013 — the association filed a “Petition for Assessments” debt-collection suit. Geivett settled it for $2,065.50.
- January 2014 — the association filed a $522 lien for unpaid fees from October to December 2013, fees Geivett believed the settlement had covered.
- Later that month — a second petition suit. Geivett counterclaimed, and says he paid $75,000 in attorney's fees on the counterclaim.
- October 2022 — the state court dismissed the second suit for failure to state a cause of action. A second amended petition was filed, then dismissed a week later, with counsel stating a lien release was being prepared. A release was never prepared.
- December 2022 — Geivett requested a recordable statement of what he owed. The answer: $50,973.50.
- August 2023 — he asked again. The answer: $65,352.96.
- February 2024 — he contracted to sell the unit for $100,000. The title company asked for a statement. The registered agent told it the unit carried $65,778.45 in delinquent or unpaid assessments.
In July 2024 Geivett sued in state court, pleading 34 state claims and four RICO violations, alleging a scheme to defraud culminating in the 2013 and 2014 lawsuits and alleging that the defendants targeted owners who owed monthly assessments, suing them to wrongfully obtain money or property. The case was removed to federal court, and the district court dismissed the RICO claims as time-barred.
The holding
Civil RICO carries a four-year limitations period, and a claim accrues when the plaintiff discovers, or should have discovered, the injury. The defendants' position was straightforward: the scheme began in 2013, so the clock ran out long ago.
The Eighth Circuit reversed on its separate accrual rule: “New RICO claims accrue each time the plaintiff suffers an independent injury on account of the defendant's wrongful conduct.” The limit on that rule matters too — injuries that are “of the same type, flow from the same source, and are part of one cognizable pattern of conduct” do not trigger a new limitations period.
The error was one of omission: “The district court dismissed Geivett's RICO claims because he allegedly suffered some injuries outside the limitations period. The district court erred by failing to consider whether any of Geivett's RICO claims accrued separately within the limitations period.”
Nothing was decided about the merits. The claims go back for that analysis.
Why this reaches Arkansas collection practice
The facts are a catalogue of things Arkansas associations do routinely, and the decision says that doing them repeatedly can restart a clock rather than run it out.
An unreleased lien is a continuing exposure. The single most damaging fact in the pleadings is that counsel said a release was being prepared and none ever was. A lien left on record after the claim it secured has been dismissed is not a filing error that ages out of relevance — on this reasoning it is a live condition capable of producing fresh injury each time the owner is harmed by it.
Each payoff statement is an act with consequences. Three statements, three escalating numbers, and the last one delivered to a title company during a sale. An Arkansas association or manager issuing a payoff or estoppel figure should be able to show how the number was built, because a figure that rises without explanation is exactly what a separate-injury theory is built from. This runs directly into estoppel and resale practice.
Serial suits are the pattern the rule is designed for. Two collection suits over overlapping periods, the second including fees the owner said the first had settled, is the shape of the allegation. Arkansas associations that re-file rather than reconcile should understand that each filing is capable of being pleaded as a separate injury.
And the defendants included the law firm and the registered agent. Not just the association. Arkansas collection counsel and managing agents are within the class of defendants an owner will name, and a limitations defence at the pleading stage is now less likely to remove them from the case.
What it does not do
Be clear about the limits, because RICO allegations are easy to overstate.
The Eighth Circuit did not hold that assessment collection is racketeering, that these defendants did anything wrong, or that the claims will survive. It held that the district court used the wrong analysis to dismiss them. Geivett still has to plead and prove a pattern of racketeering activity, predicate acts, and injury — a demanding standard that most owner RICO claims fail.
What changes is procedural leverage. A claim that survives a motion to dismiss reaches discovery, and discovery in a case alleging a scheme against a class of delinquent owners is expensive and intrusive for an association, its manager and its counsel regardless of how it ends.
Where Arkansas sits
Arkansas has no statute governing association collections and liens in planned communities — the recorded declaration supplies the lien right, and the Horizontal Property Act supplies it for condominium regimes that elected in. There is no statutory cap on collection charges, no statutory payoff-statement deadline, and no state regulator supervising the process. The Real Estate Commission's jurisdiction does not reach association management.
That absence cuts both ways. It gives Arkansas associations wide latitude in how they collect, and it leaves the federal statutes — RICO, and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act where a third party is collecting — as a larger share of the applicable law than they would be in a state with a detailed collections code.
Our own search found no reported Fair Debt Collection Practices Act or fair-housing decision against an Arkansas association, its attorneys or its manager in the Eastern or Western Districts of Arkansas in the past two years. One federal case involving an Arkansas association is pending: Butler v. Cresthaven Property Owners' Association, No. 4:25-cv-01316 (E.D. Ark.), filed December 22, 2025, naming the POA and seven individuals, with a motion to dismiss filed January 30, 2026 and no ruling recorded.
What to watch next
Whether Geivett produces a merits ruling on remand that tells associations where the line actually falls, and whether Arkansas owners begin pleading RICO alongside the state claims that usually carry these disputes. The practical defence is unchanged and unglamorous: reconcile the ledger, release the lien when the claim ends, and be able to explain every number on a payoff statement.
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