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In the recent case of Hartford Fire Insurance Co. v. California, 1 decided on 28 June 1993, the US Supreme Court has attempted to tackle the increasingly complex issue of extraterritorial jurisdiction in antitrust matters. The Supreme Court adopted a wide formulation of the extraterritorial scope of US antitrust law. It will be argued here that, in doing so, the Supreme Court has ignored the limits placed on the United States' jurisdiction by public international law. Moreover, it has forgone the opportunity to place the United States' approach to extraterritoriality upon the same principles as those which underlie the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence on the topic, thus exacerbating a conflict between the world's two major systems of competition law. At a time when politicians are working to minimise this conflict, through means such as the US/EC Competition Laws Cooperation Agreement signed in 1991, 2 this decision of the Supreme Court is not only wrong in law but misguided in policy. The problem arose in the context of antitrust proceedings brought by 19 US States and a number of private plaintiffs against a group of defendants which included London-based reinsurers in addition to US insurance companies. The defendants were claimed to have violated the Sherman Act 1890 by conspiring to boycott non-conforming insurers in order to dictate the terms on which reinsurance would be offered for commercial general liability (CGL) insurance. The plaintiffs' complaints alleged that in order to force all insurers to abandon products which they did not want to offer, namely, long-tail insurance and pollution insurance, because of the potential liabilities covered by such insurance, the primary insurers enlisted the help of reinsurers to deny reinsurance and statistical support to US insurers wanting to provide such products. As a result, pollution and long-tail coverage ceased to be available on the CGL market by November 1985. In relation to the claims against the US insurers, the Court had to consider the scope of the McCarran-Ferguson Act 1945. Section 2(b) of this Act provides that regulation of the insurance industry is generally a matter for State law, not federal; however, there is a proviso in section 3(b) that any "act(s) of boycott" remain subject to the federal jurisdiction of the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling of the District Court for the Northern District of California that the McCarran-Ferguson Act in principle gave immunity from proceedings under federal law, thus reversing (he ruling of the Court of Appeals

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This article covers the major developments and general trends in EC competition law and policy in 2006. It discusses new EC legislation and other instruments adopted by the Commission of the European Communities, such as the steps taken to strengthen the Commission’s enforcement of the competition rules by the adoption of the 2006 Guidelines on the method of setting fines and the 2006 Leniency Notice. The decisional practice of the Commission is considered, in particular in the fields of cartels, fines and penalty payments, and merger control, along with recent policy initiatives, such as the potential roles of direct settlements of infringement proceedings and of private enforcement, primarily through damages actions for breaches of the competition rules. The case law of the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance during the period is surveyed. Important judgments regarding key concepts affecting the general application of the substantive provisions of Articles 81 EC and 82 EC, such as Meca-Medina, FENIN, SELEX and O2 Germany are addressed, as well as a number of rulings by the CFI on procedural issues, including certain rulings on the Austrian Banks — Club Lombard proceedings. Key case law on vertical agreements, such as GSK and Unilever Bestfoods is dealt with, as are the principal judgments concerning cartels and competitor cooperation, which principally focus on the levels of financial penalties imposed and largely confirm the Commission’s wide discretion in that area.

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