Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. California, 509 U.S. 764, 20 (1993)

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Cite as: 509 U. S. 764 (1993)

Opinion of the Court

in context, does not state a proposition applicable to this litigation.

The full sentence from Royal Drug Co. places the quoted fragment in a different light. "In analogous contexts," we stated, "the Court has held that an exempt entity forfeits antitrust exemption by acting in concert with nonexempt parties." 440 U. S., at 231. We then cited two cases dealing with the Capper-Volstead Act, which immunizes from liability under § 1 of the Sherman Act particular activities of certain persons "engaged in the production of agricultural products." 11 Capper-Volstead Act, § 1, 42 Stat. 388, 7 U. S. C. § 291; see Case-Swayne Co. v. Sunkist Growers, Inc., 389 U. S. 384 (1967); United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188 (1939). Because these cases relied on statutory language referring to certain "persons," whereas we specifically acknowledged in Royal Drug Co. that the McCarran-Ferguson Act immunizes activities rather than entities, see 440 U. S., at 232-233, the analogy we were drawing was of course a loose one. The agreements that insurance companies made with "parties wholly outside the insurance industry," id., at 231, we noted, such as the retail pharmacists involved in Royal Drug Co. itself, or "automobile body repair shops or landlords," id., at 232 (footnote omitted), are un-11 We also cited two cases dealing with the immunity of certain agreements of labor unions under the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts. See 440 U. S., at 231-232. These cases, however, did not hold that labor unions lose their immunity whenever they enter into agreements with employers; to the contrary, we acknowledged in one of the cases that "the law contemplates agreements on wages not only between individual employers and a union but agreements between the union and employers in a multi-employer bargaining unit." Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S. 657, 664 (1965). Because the cases stand only for the proposition that labor unions are not immune from antitrust liability for certain types of agreements with employers, such as agreements "to impose a certain wage scale on other bargaining units," id., at 665, they do not support the far more general statement that exempt entities lose immunity by conspiring with nonexempt entities.

783

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