Novia Turkette Jr. was not your average thug.

He was the ringleader of a gang of criminals that evidently had no limits. In western Massachusetts during the 1970s, Turkette and his cohorts started off burglarizing drugstores and selling the stolen goods on the black market.

They eventually evolved into a thriving arson and insurance-fraud operation, where Turkette and his gang were hired out to burn down property and file fraudulent insurance claims.

Then, in order to protect their business from the Feds, the crew paid off police officers and other witnesses, before one of them eventually turned Turkette over to the F.B.I.

By most accounts, Turkette was more John Gotti than Steve Ballmer. But Microsoft chief executive Ballmer recently found his lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court over the same word in the same legal statute as the convicted gangster did in 1981.

Turkette lost his argument. And, in a huge blow to the corporate lobby, Microsoft learned earlier this month that the Supreme Court refused to even hear its case.

The word is enterprise. And the law is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO, as it's commonly known among corporate executives and mafia dons alike, was enacted under the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970.

The law was created to give the government more power to keep organized mobsters from infiltrating businesses. But today, U.S. attorneys file only a handful of criminal RICO cases each year. Instead, it's evolved into a powerful and controversial tool for plaintiffs suing corporations in civil class-action suits.

"Nobody anticipated RICO would be used in this way," says Jeff Grell, a lawyer and a professor of civil RICO law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

A lot is at stake in RICO cases. They are costly to litigate, and defendants found guilty of RICO claims must pay triple the damages. It's one of the few statutes that allows plaintiffs to recoup attorney fees and costs.

Because they are difficult to defend and potentially very costly to lose, most civil RICO cases end up being settled by companies that are also eager to avoid the stigma of losing a racketeering case. That is why Microsoft and other corporate interests want to remove the law from the plaintiffs' reach.

In the 1981 Supreme Court case, Turkette's argument centered on the fact that his rough-and-tumble organization was not an "enterprise" because it wasn't legitimate. In denying his appeal, the justices broadened the scope of the term, which is how Microsoft ended up defending itself against the very same claim.

Microsoft and Best Buy were sued together by a class of plaintiffs led by customer James Odom. In 2003, Odom sued the two companies after he purchased a computer at a Best Buy store that included a six-month free trial to Microsoft's MSN internet service. After the trial was up, he claims, Microsoft began charging his credit card without his permission.

As is typical in corporate RICO cases, the racketeering claim against Microsoft and Best Buy involves wire fraud from the electronic distribution of the customers' credit card information. The "enterprise" in question is the marketing agreement between the two companies, which was a $200 million arrangement they made in 2000.

Microsoft and Best Buy argued that their marketing agreement should not be seen as a separate enterprise in the eyes of the law.

"Nothing in its text, legislative history, or purpose indicates that RICO was intended to apply to groups of corporations," they argued in its appeal to the Supreme Court to remove the statute from the case.

"Indeed," it continued, "RICO was intended to protect businesses from organized crime, not to impose onerous burdens on them. Yet because of the potential for plaintiffs to extract windfall recoveries, the statute increasingly is used against legitimate businesses."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce weighed in as well, suggesting that by allowing RICO claims in this case, the High Court would open the floodgates to crippling corporate litigation.

"[T]he court of appeals' ruling has a profoundly negative impact on American business because it unfairly penalizes corporations with the threat of private civil actions for treble damages based on everyday business agreements between corporations," it argued in a friend-of-the-court filing.

But the dire plea from one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington did little to sway the justices. Without comment or dissent, they flatly refused to hear the case, and tossed it back to the lower court with RICO claims intact.

If the defendants lose their case, it could end up costing them "well in excess of $100 million," according to Daniel Girard, the plaintiffs' attorney. He says that the RICO statute is the only uniform federal law that governs deceptive business acts and practices.

"Businesses deal with individuals en masse," he says. "If individuals can't deal with companies en masse, then there's an imbalance. RICO is the only general remedy for fraudulent business conduct."

Girard says Microsoft has indicated it will not settle the case, and he expects to go to trial in 2008. Microsoft declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, but it appears to be holding out hope that the issue will eventually be revisited.

"While we are disappointed that the Supreme Court decided not to address this issue now, we very much appreciate the Court's attention to our petition and look forward to the law on this issue being clarified at a later date," it said in a statement.

And as for the future of civil RICO against corporations, Grell says the Supreme Court's denial to hear this case will have little impact. "The floodgates were opened a long time ago," he says. "Where there's money, there are going to be lawyers."