Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. California, 509 U.S. 764, 47 (1993)

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810

HARTFORD FIRE INS. CO. v. CALIFORNIA

Opinion of the Court

Ferguson Act, however, makes that conspiracy lawful (assuming reinsurance is state regulated), unless the refusal to deal is a "boycott."

Under the test set forth above, there are sufficient allegations of a "boycott" to sustain the relevant counts of complaint against a motion to dismiss. For example, the complaints allege that some of the defendant reinsurers threatened to "withdra[w] entirely from the business of reinsuring primary U. S. insurers who wrote on the occurrence form." App. 31 (Cal. Complaint ¶ 89), id., at 83 (Conn. Complaint ¶ 93). Construed most favorably to respondents, that allegation claims that primary insurers who wrote insurance on disfavored forms would be refused all reinsurance, even as to risks written on other forms. If that were the case, the reinsurers might have been engaging in a boycott—they would, that is, unless the primary insurers' other business were relevant to the proposed reinsurance contract (for example, if the reinsurer bears greater risk where the primary insurer engages in riskier businesses). Cf. Gonye, Underwriting the Reinsured, in Reinsurance 439, 463-466 (R. Strain ed. 1980); 2 R. Reinarz, J. Schloss, G. Patrik, & P. Kensicki, Reinsurance Practices 21-23 (1990) (same). Other allegations in the complaints could be similarly construed. For example, the complaints also allege that the reinsurers "threatened a boycott of North American CGL risks," not just CGL risks containing dissatisfactory terms, App. 26 (Cal. Complaint ¶ 74), id., at 79 (Conn. Complaint ¶ 78); that "the foreign and domestic reinsurer representatives presented their agreed upon positions that there would be changes in the CGL forms or no reinsurance," id., at 29 (Cal. Complaint ¶ 82), id., at 81-82 (Conn. Complaint ¶ 86); that some of the defendant insurers and reinsurers told "groups of insurance brokers and agents . . . that a reinsurance boycott, and thus loss of income to the agents and brokers who would be unable to find available markets for their customers, would ensue if the [revised] ISO forms were not ap-

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