In re Insurance Brokerage Antitrust Litigation, No. 07-1759; Third Circuit; opinion by Fisher, U.S.C.J.; filed September 8, 2009. Before Judges Scirica, Fisher and Greenberg. On appeal from the District of New Jersey. [Sat below: Judge Brown.] DDS No. 07-8-5300 [94 pp.]
In October 2004, the New York State attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, filed a civil complaint against the insurance broker Marsh & McLennan in New York state court, alleging that Marsh had solicited fixed bids from insurance companies and had then received improper payments for directing customers to those companies. A multistate group consisting of 12 attorneys general and several state insurance departments began investigating the alleged bid rigging and steering activities of brokers and insurers in the property and casualty insurance industry. Private parties commenced numerous putative class actions in federal courts across the country. On Feb. 17, 2005, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated these private civil actions from multiple jurisdictions and transferred the cases to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
