Ticor Title Insurance Company, et al. v. Walter Thomas Brown and Jeffrey L. Dziewit (511 U.S. 117)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 4, 1994 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 511 U.S. 117 · 114 S. Ct. 1359
- Decided
- April 4, 1994
- Term
- October Term 1993
- Vote
- 6–3
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Petition denied or appeal dismissed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. For the reasons discussed below, we have concluded that deciding this case would require us to resolve a constitutional question that may be entirely hypothetical, and we accordingly dismiss the writ as improvidently granted. I In 1985, the Federal Trade Commission initiated enforcement proceedings against petitioners, six title insurance companies, alleging that they conspired to fix prices in 13 States including Arizona and Wisconsin. Shortly after that, private parties in the affected States filed 12 different “tag-along” antitrust class actions, seeking treble damages and injunctive relief. Those private suits were consolidated for pretrial purposes pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1407 (the federal multidistrict litigation statute), and were transferred to the District Court for the .Eastern District of Pennsylvania as MDL No. 633. In January 1986, spurred on by an intervening decision of this Court that substantially weakened the claims against petitioners, see Southern Motor Carriers Rate Conference, Inc. v United States, 471 U. S. 48 (1985), petitioners and the class representatives in MDL No. 633 reached a settlement. The settlement extinguished all money damages claims against petitioners by those “ ‘purchasers and insureds, who purchased or received title insurance... from any title insurance underwriter . . . with respect to real estate located in any of the…
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