Cite as: 524 U. S. 214 (1998)
Stevens, J., dissenting
First, as the Court acknowledges, ante, at 228, the jury's finding precludes a defense based on the provisions of the tariff that purport to limit petitioner's liability. Second, and of greater importance, it determines that the most egregious tortious conduct was not merely derivative of the contract violations. Enforcement of respondent's state-law right to be free from tortious interference with business relations does not somehow award respondent an unlawful preference that should have been specified in the tariff (presumably in return for an added fee or higher rate); it instead gives effect to a generally applicable right that petitioner is required, by state law, to respect in dealing with all others, customers and noncustomers alike. Thus, at least some of the tortious interference occurred independently of the customer-carrier relationship and would have been actionable even if respondent had never entered into a contract with AT&T.
The Court correctly states that the filed rate doctrine will pre-empt some tort claims, but we have never before applied that harsh doctrine to bar relief for tortious conduct with so little connection to, or effect upon, the relationship governed by the tariff. To the extent respondent's tort claim is based on petitioner's billing disclosures and slamming practices, it neither challenges the carrier's filed rates, as did the antitrust claim in Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co., 260 U. S. 156 (1922), nor seeks a special service or privilege of the sort requested in cases such as Chicago & Alton R. Co. v. Kirby, 225 U. S. 155 (1912), and Davis v. Cornwell, 264 U. S. 560 (1924). More akin to this case is Nader v. Allegheny Airlines, Inc., 426 U. S. 290, 300 (1976), in which we held that a common-law tort action for fraudulent misrepresentation against a federally regulated air carrier could "co-exist" with the Federal Aviation Act. To a limited degree it may be said that here, as in Nader, "any impact on rates that may result from the imposition of tort liability or from practices adopted by a carrier to avoid such liability would be merely incidental." Ibid. If the Communications Act's
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