794
Opinion of the Court
enon,' " Barry, 438 U. S., at 543, to which the term "boycott" will henceforth be confined, is of course at odds with our own description of our Sherman Act cases in Barry.19 See ibid.
Moreover, the limitation to "collateral" refusals to deal threatens to shrink the § 3(b) exception far more than the majority is willing to admit. Even if the reinsurers refused all reinsurance to primary insurers "who wrote insurance on disfavored forms," including insurance "as to risks written on other forms," the majority states, the reinsurers would not be engaging in a § 3(b) boycott if "the primary insurers' other business were relevant to the proposed insurance contract (for example, if the reinsurer bears greater risk where the primary insurer engages in riskier businesses)." Post, at 810 (emphasis deleted). Under this standard, and under facts comparable to those in this litigation, I assume that reinsurers who refuse to deal at all with a primary insurer unless it ceases insuring a particular risk would not be engaging in a § 3(b) boycott if they could show that (1) insuring the risk in question increases the probability that the primary insurer will become insolvent, and that (2) it costs more to administer the reinsurance contracts of a bankrupt primary insurer (including those unrelated to the risk that caused the primary insurer to declare bankruptcy). One can only imagine the variety of similar arguments that may slowly plug what remains of the § 3(b) exception. For these reasons, I cannot agree with the majority's narrow theory of § 3(b) boycotts.
III
Finally, we take up the question presented by No. 91-1128, whether certain claims against the London reinsurers should have been dismissed as improper applications of the Sher-19 The majority contends that its concept of boycott is still "multifaceted" because it can be modified by such adjectives as "punitive," "labor," "political," and "social." Post, at 804, n. 3. This does not hide the fact that it is attempting to concoct a "precise definition" of the term, post, at 800, composed of a simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions.
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