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involved 50 futures contracts, and the trades of his brokerage
association also involved a larger number of futures contracts
than were customary for others in the pit. Petitioner's
association accounted for approximately one-third of the trading
volume in Eurodollar futures contracts on the CME.
The CME maintains a written set of rules and regulations
specifying the rights and obligations of membership in the CME
and governing trading through its facilities. As a condition of
membership in the CME, a member must agree to abide by its rules.
Except as otherwise provided by Federal law, the rights and
obligations of CME members arise pursuant to contract law, rather
than statute, government regulation, or tort. During May 1987,
the CME adopted new rules and amended existing ones that imposed,
inter alia, a limitation on the percentage of trades that one
member of a brokerage association could execute with members of
the same association and specified sanctions for violations of
those rules. Those rules provide that petitioner could execute
no more than 25 percent of his trades with other members of his
brokerage association. There had been no limit on the amount of
trading petitioner could conduct with the other members of his
association prior to the adoption of those rules. The limit
imposed by the CME rule made it harder for petitioner to fill
customer orders. In an attempt to avoid exceeding the limitation
on trading with the other members of his association, petitioner
would execute trades with them through Brian Elliott, a CME
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