806
Opinion of the Court
The one case in which we have found an activity to constitute a "boycott" within the meaning of the McCarran-Ferguson Act is St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Barry, 438 U. S. 531 (1978). There the plaintiffs were licensed physicians and their patients, and the defendant (St. Paul) was a malpractice insurer that had refused to renew the physicians' policies on an "occurrence" basis, but insisted upon a "claims made" basis. The allegation was that, at the instance of St. Paul, the three other malpractice insurers in the State had collectively refused to write insurance for St. Paul's customers, thus forcing them to accept St. Paul's renewal terms. Unsurprisingly, we held the allegation sufficient to state a cause of action. The insisted-upon condition of the boycott (not being a former St. Paul policyholder) was "artificial": it bore no relationship (or an "artificial" relationship) to the proposed contracts of insurance that the physicians wished to conclude with St. Paul's competitors.
Under the standard described, it is obviously not a "boycott" for the reinsurers to "refus[e] to reinsure coverages written on the ISO CGL forms until the desired changes were made," ante, at 788, because the terms of the primary coverages are central elements of the reinsurance contract— they are what is reinsured. See App. 16-17 (Cal. Complaint
¶¶ 26-27). The "primary policies are . . . the basis of the losses that are shared in the reinsurance agreements." 1 B. Webb, H. Anderson, J. Cookman, & P. Kensicki, Principles of Reinsurance 87 (1990); see also id., at 55; Gurley, Regulation of Reinsurance in the United States, 19 Forum 72, 73 (1983). Indeed, reinsurance is so closely tied to the terms of the primary insurance contract that one of the two categories of reinsurance (assumption reinsurance) substitutes the re-insurer for the primary or "ceding" insurer and places the reinsurer into contractual privity with the primary insurer's policyholders. See id., at 73-74; Colonial American Life Ins. Co. v. Commissioner, 491 U. S. 244, 247 (1989); B. Ostrager & T. Newman, Handbook on Insurance Coverage
Page: Index Previous 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007