Travelers Health Association v. Federal Trade Commission

298 F.2d 820, 1962 U.S. App. LEXIS 6125, 1962 Trade Cas. (CCH) 70,199
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedJanuary 24, 1962
Docket15743_1
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 298 F.2d 820 (Travelers Health Association v. Federal Trade Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Travelers Health Association v. Federal Trade Commission, 298 F.2d 820, 1962 U.S. App. LEXIS 6125, 1962 Trade Cas. (CCH) 70,199 (8th Cir. 1962).

Opinion

JOHNSEN, Chief Judge.

This case is before us on remand from the Supreme Court, 362 U.S. 293, 80 S.Ct. 717, 4 L.Ed.2d 724, after a vacating of our decision, 262 F.2d 241.

We had held, by a majority of the division sitting, with Judge Vogel dissenting, that the authority and respon *822 sibility imposed by the statutes of Nebraska on the Director of Insurance of that State, to prevent Nebraska-incorporated insurance companies from engaging in unfair or deceptive acts and practices “in any other state”, constituted such regulation or provision for control of the interstate advertising of Travelers Health Association, a Nebraska mail-order insurance company, as to deprive the Federal Trade Commission of jurisdiction over such advertising in all of the states.

The McCarran-Ferguson Act allows the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 41 et seq. to have application in the interstate field of insurance “to the extent that such business is not regulated by State law”. 15 U.S.C.A. § 1012(b).

Beyond the question of the legal adequacy of such a domiciliary control to make the situation “regulated” within the McCarran-Ferguson Act, we felt that this regulatory means was also not without a practical efficacy, in that it seemed reasonable to presume that, if Travelers Health Association sent improper soliciting material into a state where it was not licensed, the insurance department of such state v/ould bring the matter to the attention of the Nebraska Director and he would take appropriate steps to deal with the situation in accordance with his official responsibility.

Such complementary actions in the matter impressed as representing an administrative reality in the organizational association and natural liaison which have come to exist among the insurance commissioners of the states.

One factor in this official tie has been, of course, the common sensitivity of these state officers against federal regulation in the insurance field. Another element has been the common nature of their supervisory problems in the general uniformity of much state insurance regulation. In the immediate area here involved, there is the particular inducement for such liaison that every state apparent^ now has a statute imposing corresponding authority and responsibility upon its insurance commissioner to prevent its own domiciliary companies from engaging in deceptive acts and practices in other states. Cooperative action in the situation, as suggested above, thus would constitute a matter of direct mutual interest among all these officials, as a facilitation to each in performing his own domiciliary responsibility.

But however effective legally and practically these domiciliary statutes might accordingly be, the opinion of the Supreme Court has made it clear that this means of curbing deceptive acts and practices by an insurance company in other states does not constitute the type of control to which the McCarran-Ferguson Act requires the Federal Trade Commission Act to yield.

The Court’s opinion states that “the state regulation which Congress provided should operate to displace this federal law means regulation by the State in which the deception is practiced and has its impact”; that “(t)here was no indication of any thought that a State could regulate activities carried on beyond its own borders”; and that, “when Congress provided that the Federal Trade Commission Act would be displaced to the extent that the insurance business was ‘regulated’ by state law, it referred only to regulation by the State where the business activities have their operative force”. 362 U.S. at p. 298, 299, 300, 301, 302; 80 S.Ct. at p. 720, 721, 722.

Thus, the Federal Trade Commission Act must be recognized as having application to any sending of improper advertising material by Travelers Health Association into other states for soliciting purposes, except in the case of such states as have “regulated” the situation — that is, have adopted legislative provisions which are in legal concept sufficient in their form and in their enforceability to be capable of controlling the mailing of deceptive or other unfair soliciting material by the Association into the state.

In addition to its contention as to the adequacy of the Nebraska regulatory *823 statute to satisfy the McCarran-Ferguson Act generally, Travelers Health Association had urged, when the case was previously before us, that in fact there did exist in each of the other states legislative provision for local control, and with means for effective enforcement thereof, over any improper advertising material sent by it into such state. In view of the disposition which we then made, we did not reach this contention, and the case has been remanded to us by the Supreme Court for a consideration of the question.

In its opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. National Casualty Co., 357 U.S. 560, 564, 78 S.Ct. 1260, 1262, 2 L.Ed.2d 1540, the Supreme Court noted that, at the time of that decision (1958), most of the states had enacted the “Model Unfair Trade Practices Bill for Insurance”. It characterized this act as being “prohibitory legislation which proscribes unfair insurance advertising and authorizes enforcement through a scheme of administrative supervision”. Ibid. And it declared that, on the provisions of the act, with the capacity for enforcement which existed in that case from the insurance company being licensed, maintaining local agents and having the distribution of its advertising material made through these agents in each of the states involved, “there is no question but that the States [under these circumstances] possess ample means to regulate this advertising within their respective boundaries”. Ibid.

The act (commonly referred to in the insurance field as the Model Fair Trade Practices Act) has since had enactment in additional states. At the present time, it or a corresponding statute, with local variation not at this point of significance, is in effect in all of the fifty states. If. these enactments can be said to be subject to such powers of enforcement, through the state’s own instrumentalities and processes, as in legal concept to give local control over the advertising used by Travelers Health Association, then the Federal Trade Commission Act is without application to the situation in any of the states.

As, however, our previous opinion noted, 262 F.2d at p. 243, Travelers Health Association is not licensed to solicit or write insurance in any state except Nebraska and Virginia. Nor does it have representatives of any nature otherwise within those forty-eight states. Thus, such states are able to engage in enforcement of their regulatory provisions only by means of reach against the Association outside their own borders.

The crucial question here therefore is whether on this basis these states are able to exercise such fullness of compulsion against the Association as legally to provide them with local control.

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Bluebook (online)
298 F.2d 820, 1962 U.S. App. LEXIS 6125, 1962 Trade Cas. (CCH) 70,199, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/travelers-health-association-v-federal-trade-commission-ca8-1962.