Whether the plaintiffs have enough evidence in their complaint to show the “association in fact” that was more than just a loose agglomeration of individuals who provided assistance sporadically but not in any organized fashion will be the issue. If the case survives this stage, then its settlement value increases substantially because of the potential for more embarrassing information to come to light during the discovery phase.

Businesses have been hostile to RICO because of the threat of a triple-damage award, and Congress has been receptive to efforts to limit the scope of the law. The dismissal last month of a RICO lawsuit against the private equity financier Lynn Tilton, the so-called Diva of Distress, shows how the law has been limited to keep some disputes out of the federal courts.

That RICO claim was filed by three funds that Ms. Tilton and her firm, Patriarch Partners, created to raise more than $2.5 billion from the sale of collateralized loan obligations in which the proceeds were used to invest in distressed companies. The funds, named Zohar, claimed that she had misled them about a significant deterioration in the loans and misappropriated the equity in the companies for her own benefit, which constituted mail and wire fraud by stealing their interests.

The RICO case came on the heels of an administrative enforcement action filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015. The S.E.C. accused Ms. Tilton of violating the Investment Advisers Act by reporting misleading values for the funds’ investments to collect larger management fees. An S.E.C. administrative law judge ruled in her favor by dismissing the case in September, and the agency decided not to appeal that decision, leaving her victory intact.

On Dec. 29, a federal district judge dismissed the RICO claim against her because it ran afoul of an amendment adopted by Congress back in 1995 to limit the scope of the statute. The amendment precludes filing RICO claims if they “rely upon any conduct that would have been actionable as fraud in the purchase or sale of securities to establish a violation.” In other words, if the alleged violations involve securities fraud, they cannot survive a motion to dismiss even if they could constitute mail or wire fraud.

Though the funds artfully avoided using the term “securities” in the RICO claim, the judge in the case, William H. Pauley III, concluded that he “cannot ignore allegations that an integral component of that scheme to loot included pillaging portfolio companies of their equity, redirecting Zohar’s equity interests for defendants’ benefit and diverting the equity distributions into defendants’ coffers — all actions coinciding with the purchase or sale of securities.” So while there might have been fraud, it was close enough to securities transactions that the case had to be dismissed.

RICO lawsuits are tempting. They allow a plaintiff to sue a variety of defendants by claiming that they acted together and seek an award of triple damages, a bonanza in some business disputes that can run into millions of dollars. But these cases should also come with a bright red warning sign: Tread lightly or see your case thrown out of court before it even gets started.