274
Opinion of the Court
Indeed, the insolvency of the victim directly injured adds a further concern to those already expressed, since a suit by an indirectly injured victim could be an attempt to circumvent the relative priority its claim would have in the directly injured victim's liquidation proceedings. See Mid-State Fertilizer Co. v. Exchange National Bank of Chicago, 877 F. 2d 1333, 1336 (CA7 1989).
As against the force of these considerations of history and
policy, SIPC's reliance on the congressional admonition that RICO be "liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes," § 904(a), 84 Stat. 947, does not deflect our analysis. There is, for that matter, nothing illiberal in our construction: We hold not that RICO cannot serve to right the conspirators' wrongs, but merely that the nonpurchasing customers, or SIPC in their stead, are not proper plaintiffs. Indeed, we fear that RICO's remedial purposes would more probably be hobbled than helped by SIPC's version of liberal construction: Allowing suits by those injured only indirectly would open the door to "massive and complex damages litigation[, which would] not only burde[n] the courts, but [would] also undermin[e] the effectiveness of treble-damages suits." Associated General Contractors, 459 U. S., at 545.
In sum, subrogation to the rights of the manipulation conspiracy's secondary victims does, and should, run afoul of proximate-causation standards, and SIPC must wait on the outcome of the trustees' suit. If they recover from Holmes, SIPC may share according to the priority SIPA gives its claim. See 15 U. S. C. § 78fff-2(c).
B
SIPC also claims a statutory entitlement to pursue Holmes for funds advanced to the trustees for administering the liquidation proceedings. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30. Its theory here apparently is not one of subrogation, to which the statute makes no reference in connection with SIPC's obligation
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