Eighth Circuit revives a RICO claim over condo assessment collection
Eighth Circuit revives a RICO claim over condo assessment collection
2026-09-12 · Nebraska · Courts
A federal appeals court whose decisions bind Nebraska has reinstated a unit owner's racketeering suit against his condominium association, its manager, its registered agent and its collection counsel. The Eighth Circuit decided Geivett v. AMC Management, LLC on November 5, 2025, in a published per curiam opinion, reversing and remanding.1
What the suit alleges
Dennis Geivett sued AMC Management, two individuals, the law firm Sandberg, Phoenix & Von Gontard, and Parkside Condominium Association over a decade of assessment collection. The allegations include repeated assessment suits, a $522 lien that was never released, and escalating payoff demands to the title company on the sale of a $100,000 unit: $50,973.50, then $65,352.96, then $65,778.45.
The case arose in the Eastern District of Missouri, not Nebraska. The Eighth Circuit covers both, so the ruling is binding law in the federal courts of Nebraska.
The holding
The district court dismissed on civil RICO's four-year limitations period, treating the claims as time-barred from the start of the conduct. The Eighth Circuit reversed on a narrow ground:
“The district court erred by failing to consider whether any of Geivett's RICO claims accrued separately within the limitations period.”1
That is a procedural holding, not a finding that anyone did anything wrong. Nothing has been decided about the merits, and the case returns to the district court. What it establishes is that a long-running course of assessment-collection conduct cannot be immunised simply because it started more than four years ago: a new injury within the window can carry its own claim.
Why this is the most association-adverse federal ruling in the circuit right now
Assessment collection is, by its nature, a repeating course of conduct. An association bills, a balance accrues, charges are added, a lien is recorded, a suit is filed, a payoff figure is quoted, and the cycle runs for years. The limitations defence has historically been strong against a plaintiff attacking that pattern, because the pattern's origin is usually old.
A separate-accrual analysis dismantles that defence. Each new demand, each new charge, each new lien or refusal to release one, becomes a candidate for its own injury date. An association whose collection conduct has been consistent for a decade does not get the benefit of the decade; it gets scrutiny of the last four years.
Two further features of the case deserve a Nebraska board's attention. First, the defendants include the association's vendors — the management company, the registered agent, the law firm. Civil RICO is pleaded against enterprises, and the association's service providers are routinely named alongside it. Second, the pleaded facts that make the complaint look serious are ordinary collection artefacts: an unreleased lien, and payoff quotes that moved.
Where a Nebraska association is exposed
Release satisfied liens, promptly, every time. An unreleased lien for a small satisfied balance is the single fact in this complaint that requires no interpretation to look bad. It is also the easiest thing on this list to fix, and it is a clerical failure rather than a legal judgment.
Make the payoff figure reproducible. A payoff demand should be an itemised statement a third party can recompute: assessments by period, late charges by the rule that generated them, interest at the stated rate, costs and fees as actually incurred. Three different figures quoted to a title company over one closing is the allegation here, and the defence to it is arithmetic.
Know where the fee authority comes from. Nebraska's assessment lien statutes cover fees, charges, late charges and interest.2 LB 1251 would have added attorney's fees and court costs to that list and did not pass. An association adding charges beyond its statutory and declaration authority is generating precisely the injuries a separate-accrual theory feeds on.
Supervise the collection vendor. The association does not escape the pleading by having delegated the conduct, and neither does the vendor. A board that has never read its collection firm's actual demand letters should read them.
The limits of this case
Say the caveats plainly. It is a Missouri case applying federal law, the association has not been found liable of anything, the holding is about when claims accrue, and a reversal of a limitations dismissal is a long way from a judgment. Civil RICO claims against community associations are frequently filed and rarely succeed.
What changed is the cost of defending one. A claim that would previously have been dismissed on the pleadings now proceeds to a separate-accrual analysis, and that is measured in fees the association pays whether or not it eventually wins.
What to watch next
Watch the remand, and watch whether the separate-accrual framing shows up in Eighth Circuit assessment cases with Nebraska facts. Nebraska federal courts have seen very little association litigation of this kind; a published circuit decision lowering a pleading barrier is how that changes.
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