COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY, EX REL., ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERT B. CHANDLER III v. ANTHEM INSURANCE COMPANIES, INC., SOUTHEASTERN GROUP, INC., AND SOUTHEASTERN UNITED MEDIGROUP, INC.
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April 30, 1999; 2:00 p.m.
TO BE PUBLISHED
C ommonwealth O f K entucky
C ourt O f A ppeals
NO.
1998-CA-001016-MR
COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY,
EX REL., ATTORNEY GENERAL
ALBERT B. CHANDLER III
APPELLANT
APPEAL FROM FRANKLIN CIRCUIT COURT
HONORABLE ROGER L. CRITTENDEN, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 1997-CI-001566
v.
ANTHEM INSURANCE COMPANIES, INC.,
SOUTHEASTERN GROUP, INC., AND
SOUTHEASTERN UNITED MEDIGROUP,
INC.
APPELLEES
OPINION
AFFIRMING IN PART, REVERSING IN PART, AND REMANDING
** ** ** ** **
BEFORE:
KNOPF, KNOX, AND SCHRODER, JUDGES.
KNOPF, JUDGE:
The Commonwealth, through its Attorney General,
appeals from an April 6, 1998, order of the Franklin Circuit
Court summarily dismissing a portion of the Commonwealth’s
consumer protection action against the appellees, Anthem
Insurance Companies, Inc.; Southeastern Group, Inc., d/b/a Anthem
Health Plans; and Southeastern United Medigroup, Inc., d/b/a
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield (“Anthem” or “the insurers”).
Among other allegations, the Attorney General complained that
Anthem and its corporate family had engaged in a fraudulent
scheme to charge Kentucky consumers of health insurance inflated
premium rates.
CR 12(2)(f).
Anthem moved to dismiss the complaint pursuant to
The trial court ruled, without opinion, that this
allegation fails to state a cause of action under the Consumer
Protection Act, KRS 367.110 et seq.
For the following reasons,
we affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for additional
proceedings.
The allegations in this case are strikingly similar to
those advanced in Wegoland Ltd. v. NYNEX Corp., 27 F.3d 17 (2nd
Cir. 1994), which the trial court there summarized as follows:
The complaints allege that NYTel [New York
Telephone Company] and NETel [New England
Telephone Company] gave regulatory agencies
and consumers misleading financial
information to support the inflated rates
they requested. More particularly,
plaintiffs allege a scheme in which certain
unregulated subsidiaries of NYNEX [the
corporate entities collectively along with
subsidiaries and individual directors and
officers] sold products and services to NYTel
and NETel at inflated prices. NYTel and
NETel then used those prices to justify
inflated rates, resulting in high profits to
the NYNEX corporate family, which profited by
extracting higher rates from ratepayers, but
did not suffer from the higher “cost” of
products and services because these extra
costs inured to the benefit of members of the
corporate family. The net effect, the
complaints allege, was that the ratepayers
and the regulatory agencies were misled into
believing that certain higher rates were
justifiable, and the NYNEX corporate family
was able to enjoy inflated profits as a
result of its misrepresentations.
Wegoland Ltd. v. NYNEX Corp., supra, 27 F.3d at 18 (internal
quotation marks omitted).
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In this case, similarly, the Attorney General alleges
that the 1993 merger of Anthem Insurance Companies, Inc., an
Indiana-domiciled mutual insurance company, with Southeastern
Mutual Insurance Company of Kentucky gave rise to a corporate
family, Anthem, in part regulated, in part unregulated, like the
NYNEX family in Wegoland.
Much as was alleged in Wegoland, the
Attorney General alleges that unregulated portions of the Anthem
family charged portions regulated in Kentucky excessive fees for
administrative and other services and that those excessive fees
were then fraudulently passed on to Kentucky rate-payers.
The
excessive fees served not only to enhance the corporate family’s
overall profits, according to the Attorney General, but served as
well to bolster the value of the unregulated portion of the
family’s stock, stock held primarily by Anthem.
The Attorney
General charges that Anthem obtained approval for the 1993 merger
by misrepresenting the merger’s purposes and potential benefits.
The merger either advanced or made possible the scheme because,
by giving rise to the corporate family, it provided the framework
within which the scheme could operate.
The Attorney General
further charges that the insurance companies then carried out the
scheme by basing fraudulent rate applications on the overstated
intra-family service charges.
The trial court’s order does not include the court’s
reasoning, but the appellees offer two (2) rationales for
affirming the dismissal of the Attorney General’s complaint.
The
so called “filed rate doctrine,” they assert, renders any of
their actions approved by the Insurance Commission (as were the
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merger and allegedly excessive rates) immune from suit under the
Consumer Protection Act.
Moreover, they insist, the dealings
complained of by the Attorney General, the merger negotiations
for example, are not cognizable under the Consumer Protection Act
because they did not occur “in trade or commerce.”
As the parties acknowledge, a dismissal pursuant to CR
12.02(f) for failure to state a claim is proper only if “it
appears the pleading party would not be entitled to relief under
any set of facts which could be proved in support of his claim.”
Pari-Mutuel Clerks’ Union v. Ky. Jockey Club, Ky., 551 S.W.2d
801, 803 (1977) (citation omitted).
In reviewing such a
dismissal, this Court must presume that all the factual
allegations in the complaint are true and must draw any
reasonable inference in favor of the non-movant.
“The issue is
not whether a plaintiff will ultimately prevail but whether the
claimant is entitled to offer evidence to support the claims.”
Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236, 94 S. Ct. 1683, 1686, 40 L.
Ed. 2d 90, 96 (1974); Feathers v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., Ky.
App., 667 S.W.2d 693 (1983), overruled on other grounds, Federal
Kemper Ins. Co. v. Hornback, Ky., 711 S.W.2d 844 (1986).
The insurance companies maintain that, even if the
Attorney General’s allegations are true, the “filed rate
doctrine” shields them from liability.
In general terms, the
filed rate--or filed tariff--doctrine provides that tariffs duly
adopted by a regulatory agency are not subject to collateral
attack in court.
This preclusion is said to ensure both that
regulatory rates are non-discriminatory (rate-payers who bring
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suit will not obtain rates more favorable than those who do not),
and that the agency’s “primary jurisdiction” in the area of its
expertise is upheld.
Wegoland Ltd. v. NYNEX Corp., supra.
The
doctrine received one of its earliest expressions in Keogh v.
Chicago & Northwestern Ry., 260 U.S. 156, 43 S. Ct. 47, 67 L. Ed.
183 (1922).
In that case, a Minnesota manufacturer and shipper
sought damages from an association of railroads for having
collusively set excessive shipping fees in violation of the
antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court ruled that, even if the
alleged conspiracy could be proved, the shipper had no cause of
action for damages because the Interstate Commerce Commission had
approved the allegedly excessive rates and had determined them to
be reasonable and non-discriminatory.
To recognize the
plaintiff’s claim, Justice Brandeis explained, would require a
court to second-guess the Commission and would thus tend to
undermine the regulatory scheme adopted by Congress.
The legal rights of shipper as against
carrier in respect to a rate are measured by
the published tariff. Unless and until
suspended or set aside, this rate is made,
for all purposes, the legal rate, as between
carrier and shipper. The rights as defined
by the tariff cannot be varied or enlarged by
either contract or tort of the carrier.
Keogh v. Chicago & Northwestern Ry., supra, at 163, 43 S. Ct. at
49, 67 L. Ed. at
(citation omitted).
The purpose of the
filed rate doctrine, in other words,
is to preserve the authority of the
legislatively created agency to set
reasonable and uniform rates and to insure
that those rates are enforced, thereby
preventing price discrimination.
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Sun City Taxpayers’ Association v. Citizens Utilities Company,
847 F.Supp. 281, 288 (1994) (citations omitted).
The filed rate doctrine, therefore,
prohibits a ratepayer from recovering damages
measured by comparing the filed rate and the
rate that might have been approved absent the
conduct in issue.
Id. at 288.
Since the rendition of Keogh, courts have repeatedly
held, in a variety of regulatory contexts, “that a consumer’s
claim, however disguised, seeking relief for an injury allegedly
caused by the payment of a rate on file with a regulatory
commission, is viewed as an attack upon the rate approved by the
regulatory commission.
rate doctrine.’”
All such claims are barred by the ‘filed
Porr v. NYNEX Corporation, 660 N.Y.S.2d 440,
442 (1997) (telephone regulations); Minihane v. Weissman and
Empire Blue Cross & Blue Shield, 640 N.Y.S.2d 102 (1996) (health
insurance regulations); Town of Norwood v. New England Power
Company, 23 F.Supp.2d 109 (D.Mass. 1998) (electric utility
regulations).
In recent years, the filed rate doctrine has been
criticized as obsolete and as out of keeping with legislative
attempts to imbue regulated industries with as much freedom for
competition as possible, but the doctrine has survived these
attacks.
In Square D Co. v. Niagara Frontier Tariff Bur., for
example, 476 U.S. 409, 106 S. Ct. 1922, 90 L. Ed. 2d 413 (1986),
the Supreme Court reaffirmed the doctrine against just such
criticisms.
As was the case in Keogh, Square D involved
-6-
allegations by a shipper that it had been subjected to excessive
and illegally obtained shipping rates.
The shipper, seeking
damages based on the alleged overcharges, urged that Keogh be
overruled because the practical reasons advanced in that case for
judicial abstention from rate review had lost much of their
cogency.
The Supreme Court, although apparently sympathetic to
much of this criticism, held nevertheless that Congress’s
historical retention of the doctrine despite numerous
opportunities to modify or overrule it had so established it
within the economic fabric of the nation as to render judicial
repeal inappropriate.
More recently, in AT&T v. Central Office Telephone, 524
U.S.
, 118 S. Ct.
, 141 L. Ed. 2d 222 (1998), the Court
applied the filed rate doctrine to reverse an award of damages to
a reseller of long-distance telephone service which had bargained
for out-of-tariff consideration from AT&T and suffered injury to
its business when AT&T later reneged on the bargain and insisted
upon tariff rates and conditions.
Less apologetic than it had
been in Square D, the Court noted that the principle of nondiscrimination lies at the heart of any tariff system.
No matter
how market-oriented the tariff system may be, the underlying
principle of non-discrimination cannot be given effect without
strict enforcement of filed rates, i.e. without the filed rate
doctrine.
Although the filed rate doctrine originated in the
federal courts, it “has been held to apply equally to rates filed
with state agencies by every court to have considered the
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question.”
Destec Energy, Inc. v. Southern California Gas
Company, 5 F.Supp.2d 433, 458 (S.D.Tex. 1997) (citations
omitted).
In N.C. Steel, Inc. v. National Council on
Compensation Insurance, 496 S.E.2d 369 (N.C. 1998), North
Carolina employers alleged that they had been charged excessive
premiums for workers’ compensation insurance as a result of the
defendant insurance companies’ withholding of evidence from the
Insurance Commissioner.
In adopting and applying the filed rate
doctrine to bar the complaint, the Supreme Court of North
Carolina reasoned that the comprehensive regulatory scheme for
insurance companies evidenced the General Assembly’s intent that
duly established insurance rates not be subject to collateral
attack by rate-payers.
We agree with the appellees that the filed rate
doctrine, although not heretofore applied in Kentucky by name,
has nevertheless been recognized in Kentucky in principle.
See
Boone County Sand and Gravel Company, Inc. V. Owen County Rural
Electric Cooperative Corporation, Ky. App., 779 S.W.2d 224 (1989)
(holding that the appellant was liable for undercharges based
upon the filed rate despite the appellee’s apparent negligence in
not charging the correct amount); see also Big Rivers Electric
Corporation v. Thorpe, 921 F.Supp. 460, 464-65 (noting in the
context of regulated utilities, that Kentucky’s statutory and
case law “clearly set[s] forth the underlying principles of the
filed rate doctrine . . .”).
Indeed, we believe that the filed
rate doctrine is but a special instance of the more general
principle, observed in American Beauty Homes Corporation v.
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Louisville and Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Commission,
Ky., 379 S.W.2d 450 (1964), that legislative functions are
outside the scope of judicial power.
Such legislative functions
include both the zoning adjustment at issue in American Beauty
Homes and the rate setting at issue here.
This constitutional
limitation renders moot, we think, the debate mentioned above as
to whether the filed rate doctrine has lost its practical
justification.
The filed rate doctrine applies, furthermore, to the
insurance practices involved in this case.
KRS Subchapters
304.17 and 304.17A are detailed legislative attempts to regulate
the health insurance industry in Kentucky.
Both currently and at
the time of the improprieties alleged by the Attorney General,
health insurance premium rates were required to be filed with and
approved by the Department of Insurance.
KRS Subchapter 304.2
provides for that Department and entrusts to the Commissioner
thereof supervision of its operations, including review,
investigation, and approval or disapproval of premium rates.
The
legislative polices embodied in the insurance code and the
administrative apparatus called into being to carry out those
policies are sufficiently comprehensive to remove health
insurance regulation from the common law in Kentucky and to
invoke the filed rate doctrine.
Accordingly, we agree with the
appellees and the trial court that the Attorney General’s suit
for damages must be dismissed.
The claimed damages could only be
calculated by determining the insurance rates which “should” have
been adopted by the Commissioner.
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This is precisely the sort of
inquiry courts are constitutionally unable to perform.
Like the
court in Wegoland Ltd., moreover, we are persuaded that “there is
no fraud exception to the filed rate doctrine that would save
this [portion of the Attorney General’s] suit from dismissal.”
Wegoland Ltd. v. NYNEX Corp., supra, 27 F.3d at 22.1
This conclusion is not the end of the matter, however,
for the Consumer Protection Act, upon which the Attorney General
bases his claim, provides for remedies other than damages, such
as injunctive relief (KRS 367.190) and civil penalties (KRS
367.990).
These alternative remedies do not implicate the filed
rate doctrine, which, contrary to the appellees’ contentions,
does not provide regulated entities with a general immunity from
the laws governing business practice:
[T]he filed rate doctrine does not leave
regulated industries immune from suit under
the RICO [Racketeering in Corrupt
Organizations Act] or antitrust statutes.
While individual ratepayers are precluded
from challenging the reasonableness of the
rates, the proper government officials remain
free to pursue this avenue in appropriate
circumstances.
Wegoland Ltd. v. NYNEX Corp, supra, 27 F.3d at 22 (citation
omitted).
The same point was discussed as follows in Sun City
Taxpayers’ Association v. Citizens Utilities Company, supra:
As Justice Brandeis explained in Keogh,
the filed rate doctrine bars a private
party from bringing a civil action under
the Antitrust Act, but it does not bar
1
We note that this ruling does not leave rate-payers without
a remedy. Changes to the Insurance Code adopted in 1996 provide
that the Insurance Commissioner may reconsider approved premium
rates at any time and order refunds of any premiums determined to
have been excessive. KRS 304.17A.095.
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the Government from bringing an action
against the defendant. . . . As a
result, the filed rate doctrine does not
completely immunize utilities from the
anti-trust laws; they remain subject to
actions brought by the Government for
criminal sanctions and other equitable
relief. . . . Similarly, the filed rate
doctrine would not, as the plaintiff
suggests, immunize utilities completely
from RICO--they would remain subject to
suits brought by the Government under
RICO because the filed rate doctrine
bars only a ratepayer’s private civil
RICO remedy.
If the Attorney General has stated a cause of action
under the Consumer Protection Act, therefore, his claim is not
barred even though the filed rate doctrine limits the potential
remedies.
Anthem contends, however, that the business conduct of
which the Attorney General complains does not come within the
Consumer Protection Act because it did not occur in the course of
trade or commerce.
It is that contention to which we now turn.
The heart of the Consumer Protection Act, KRS 367.170,
Unlawful acts, provides as follows:
(1) Unfair, false, misleading, or deceptive
acts or practices in the conduct of any trade
or commerce are hereby declared unlawful.
(2) For the purposes of this section, unfair
shall be construed to mean unconscionable.
Anthem focuses its attention on the portion of the Attorney
General’s complaint concerning Anthem’s alleged misleading
statements to shareholders and to the Insurance Commissioner as
it sought approval for the merger with Southeastern Mutual
Insurance Company.
Because proxy solicitations and merger
negotiations are not sales, rentals, or other distributions of
-11-
services or property, the appellees maintain, they do not fall
within the purview of the Consumer Protection Act.
Whatever its merits as an abstract expression of law,
the appellees’ contention mischaracterizes the complaint.
Recalling that at this stage of the proceeding we must accept the
Attorney General’s factual accusations as true and indulge him
with the benefit of every reasonable legal doubt, we believe that
the appellees’ focus on the merger provides too narrow a view;
when more fully considered, the complaint states a cause of
action under KRS 367.170.
We note, initially, that our Supreme Court has
construed the Consumer Protection Act broadly to effectuate its
purpose of “curtail[ing] unfair, false, misleading or deceptive
practices in the conduct of commerce . . . .”
North American Van
Lines, Inc. v. Commonwealth, Ky., 600 S.W.2d 458, 462 (1980).
The Court has recognized that the “conduct of commerce” can
include wholesaler and producer transactions, North American Van
Lines, supra, and that it can include retail practices other than
those immediately involving sales or leases, provided that they
bear directly and significantly on such ultimate dealings.
See
Stevens v. Motorists Mutual Insurance Company, Ky., 759 S.W.2d 77
(1988) (holding that the Consumer Protection Act provides a
remedy against one’s own insurer for deceptive claims settlement
practices).
The Attorney General has alleged deceptive acts by
Anthem--false statements to the public, to shareholders, and to
the Insurance Commissioner--which, allegedly, were intended to
and did directly affect the price term of Anthem’s retail
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insurance contracts; these acts, therefore, if proven, could
bring Anthem within the scope of the Consumer Protection Act.2
Our Supreme Court, furthermore, has previously deemed an
insurance company’s rate filings subject to the consumer
protection provisions of the Insurance Code.
Morgan v. Blue
Cross and Blue Shield of Kentucky, Inc., Ky., 794 S.W.2d 629
(1989).
We fail to see why such rate filings would not then be
subject to the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act.
This last point raises an important question related
to the administrative law concerns discussed above.
Why, it may
be asked, should the Attorney General be allowed to resort to the
Consumer Protection Act when he may well have an administrative
remedy under the Insurance Code?
Administrative remedies must
usually be exhausted before recourse can be had in court, and
injunctive relief is usually inappropriate if the petitioner has
an alternative remedy.
Cf. State of Georgia v. Pennsylvania R.
Co., 324 U.S. 439, 65 S. Ct. 716, 89 L. Ed. 1051 (1945)
(dissenting opinion by Justice Stone).
2
The Attorney General’s entitlement to a remedy would
depend, of course, on his proving that these acts had caused or
were likely to cause an injury. Because such proof is apt to
require him to show that the approved premium rates were higher
than they would have been absent the alleged wrong doing, it
might seem that the filed rate doctrine should bar any relief,
not just damages. Proving that the filed rate was affected by
the alleged fraud, however, is not the same as proving what the
rate should have been. The court is competent to determine
whether Anthem engaged in wrongful acts and whether those acts
tainted the rate-making process. The filed rate doctrine (and
separation of powers constraints) precludes only the court’s
being asked to redo the agency’s legislative business and
substituting its policy judgments for the agency’s. See American
Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Central Office Telephone,
Inc., supra, (concurring opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist).
-13-
These considerations would very likely foil the
remainder of the Attorney General’s claim were it not for KRS
367.190.
That statute, which underscores the Attorney General’s
authority to seek to enjoin unfair trade practices, provides in
subpart (3) as follows:
In order to obtain a temporary or permanent
injunction, it shall not be necessary to
allege or prove that an adequate remedy at
law does not exist. Further, it shall not be
necessary to allege or prove that irreparable
injury, loss or damage will result if the
injunctive relief is denied.
We regard this relaxation of the usual standards governing the
availability of an injunction as a strong indication of the
General Assembly’s intent that the Consumer Protection Act, in
the hands of the Attorney General, be a flexible and effective
means of combating abusive trade practices however novel their
forms or well disguised their sources.
Denying the Attorney
General an opportunity to develop the case he has alleged against
Anthem would frustrate that intent.
In sum, although we agree with the trial court that the
filed rate doctrine bars rate-payers (even under the auspices of
the Attorney General) from seeking damages for approved but
allegedly improper insurance rates, we do not agree that that
doctrine or any other principle of administrative law shields the
appellees from all liability under the Consumer Protection Act.
The Attorney General’s responsibility in his role as policeman of
the marketplace authorizes him, when he deems it of sufficient
importance to the public welfare, to seek injunctive relief
against threatened unfair trade practices and civil penalties
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against such practices already committed.
Because the
allegations the Attorney General has raised against the
appellees, could, if proven, amount to a violation (or
violations) of the Consumer Protection Act, and because remedies
other than damages are potentially available, the trial court
erred by dismissing the Attorney General’s complaint.
For these reasons, we affirm the April 6, 1998, order
of Franklin Circuit Court to the extent that it dismissed the
Attorney General’s claim for damages, but otherwise we reverse
that order and remand for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.
ALL CONCUR.
BRIEFS FOR APPELLANT:
BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:
A.B. Chandler III
Attorney General
K. Gregory Haynes
Frank F. Chuppe
Virginia H. Snell
Jean W. Bird
Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs
Louisville, Kentucky
Scott White
Assistant Deputy Attorney
General
Robert Bullock
Kirk Ogrosky
David S. Kaplan
Assistant Attorneys General
Frankfort, Kentucky
ORAL ARGUMENT FOR APPELLEE:
K. Gregory Haynes
Louisville, Kentucky
ORAL ARGUMENT FOR APPELLANT:
David S. Kaplan
Frankfort, Kentucky
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