Law Commons^™

Immunity Through Bankruptcy For The Sackler Family, Daniel G. Aaron, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

In August 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked one of the largest public health settlements in history: that of Purdue Pharma, L.P., reached in bankruptcy court. The negotiated bankruptcy settlement approved by the court would give a golden parachute to the very people thought to have ignited the opioid crisis: the Sackler family. As the Supreme Court considers the propriety of immunity through bankruptcy, the case has raised fundamental questions about whether bankruptcy is a proper refuge from tort liability and whether law checks power or law serves power.

Of course, bankruptcy courts often limit liability against a distressed …

The Insurance Industry's Antitrust Immunity, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act provides that federal legislation generally, including the antitrust laws, is “applicable to the business of insurance [only] to the extent that such business is not regulated by State law.” The statute was enacted after United States v. South Eastern Underwriters Assn. (1944), held that insurance transactions were “interstate commerce” and thus subject to the antitrust laws. That case had in turn undermined the traditional view expressed in Paul v. Virginia (1868), that insurance was not interstate commerce, but strictly local transactions. The South Eastern case followed in turn upon the Supreme Court's decision in Wickard v. …

Federalism And Antitrust Reform, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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Currently the Antitrust Modernization Commission is considering numerous proposals for adjusting the relationship between federal antitrust authority and state regulation. This essay examines two areas that have produced a significant amount of state-federal conflict: state regulation of insurance and the state action immunity for general state regulation. It argues that no principle of efficiency, regulatory theory, or federalism justifies the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which creates an antitrust immunity for state regulation of insurance. What few benefits the Act confers could be fully realized by an appropriate interpretation of the state action doctrine. Second, the current formulation of the antitrust state action …

Professional Sports And Antitrust Law: The Groundrules Of Immunity, Exemption And Liability, Phillip J. Closius

All Faculty Scholarship

As professional sports leagues increased their wealth and national prominence, the federal judicial system became uncomfortable with its characterization of sports as something other than a business. The Supreme Court reflected this change in policy in the 1950s by refusing to extend baseball's antitrust exemption to other sports. The application of the Sherman Act to all nonbaseball sports established the foundation for the forceful imposition of antitrust constraints on team owners in the sports litigation of the 1970s. These "revolutionary" decisions substantially eliminated the status of sports as a game or amusement insulated from the legal obligations of profit-making industries. …