With Highways Now Subject to the Sherman Act, can the Seas be Far Behind?
by Steve Block (Foster Pepper PLLC) This article was orginally published in “The Transportation Lawyer”, a publication of the Transportation Lawyers Association. Shortly after implementation of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998 (“OSRA”), with international shipping circles hailing a new era of deregulated (or, perhaps, “re-regulated”) ocean transportation, legal lookouts focused their collective scopes on that last great regulatory horizon – carrier antitrust immunity. Remember? It was 1999-2000, large ocean shippers were entering into volume-intensive, long-term service contracts; smaller shippers were buddying up in shipper associations to gain greater bargaining strength; rates were coming down; and – with APL and Sea-Land being sold to foreign concerns – Uncle Sam no longer had much of an international fleet to protect. “In these waters, how does carrier antitrust immunity fit the program?” protested certain shipper and intermediary circles. The steamship lines’ leg up original
