772
Opinion of the Court
wanted legal defense costs to be counted against the stated limits (providing a "legal defense cost cap").
To understand how the defendants are alleged to have pressured the targeted primary insurers to make these changes, one must be aware of two important features of the insurance industry. First, most primary insurers rely on certain outside support services for the type of insurance coverage they wish to sell. Defendant Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), an association of approximately 1,400 domestic property and casualty insurers (including the primary insurer defendants, Hartford Fire Insurance Company, Allstate Insurance Company, CIGNA Corporation, and Aetna Casualty and Surety Company), is the almost exclusive source of support services in this country for CGL insurance. See id., at 19 (Cal. Complaint ¶ 38). ISO develops standard policy forms and files or lodges them with each State's insurance regulators; most CGL insurance written in the United States is written on these forms. Ibid. (Cal. Complaint
¶ 39); id., at 74 (Conn. Complaint ¶ 50). All of the "traditional" features of CGL insurance relevant to this litigation were embodied in the ISO standard CGL insurance form that had been in use since 1973 (1973 ISO CGL form). Id., at 22 (Cal. Complaint ¶¶ 51-54); id., at 75 (Conn. Complaint ¶¶ 56- 58). For each of its standard policy forms, ISO also supplies actuarial and rating information: it collects, aggregates, interprets, and distributes data on the premiums charged, claims filed and paid, and defense costs expended with respect to each form, id., at 19 (Cal. Complaint ¶ 39); id., at 74 (Conn. Complaint ¶¶ 51-52), and on the basis of these data it predicts future loss trends and calculates advisory premium rates, id., at 19 (Cal. Complaint ¶ 39); id., at 74 (Conn. Complaint ¶ 53). Most ISO members cannot afford to continue to use a form if ISO withdraws these support services. See id., at 32-33 (Cal. Complaint ¶¶ 97, 99).
Second, primary insurers themselves usually purchase insurance to cover a portion of the risk they assume from the
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