The International Chamber of Commerce has called on the United States Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision subjecting transactions among foreign companies outside the United States to American antitrust jurisdiction.

In a February brief on behalf of its 130-nation business membership, ICC told the Supreme Court that the decision would impose a massive burden on international companies and cause them to completely rethink their manner of doing business and their potential exposure under U.S. antitrust law.

The brief was filed in support of an appeal by a group of European pharmaceutical companies against a ruling of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The appeals court had ruled that foreign antitrust plaintiffs may sue in U.S. courts for antitrust damages entirely incurred outside the United States.

The companies contesting the appeals court ruling are Hoffmann-La Roche, BASF, Rhône-Poulenc and some of their subsidiaries. The ruling referred to a price fixing suit brought by an Ecuadorean company, Empagran, involving sales of vitamins.

"If permitted to stand, the decision would open the U.S federal courts to a flood of claims brought by foreign parties, even though the claims have no direct connection to the United States," said Paul Victor (Weil Gotshal & Manges), who led the drafting of the ICC brief.

To sue in U.S. courts, claimants would merely have to demonstrate that the alleged conspiracy also gave rise to some other claim that did have a sufficient relationship to U.S. commerce, he said.

The ICC brief stated: "If the ruling of the Court of Appeals is allowed to stand, the United States will indeed become the regulator of the competitive conditions of markets throughout the world. That result would impose a massive burden on international businesses, and in fact would likely exceed the limits of Congress's jurisdiction to prescribe laws affecting the interests of other nations."

Recently, both ICC and USCIB joined in a related amicus brief to the Supreme Court, drawing attention to misuse of the U.S. Alien Tort Statute to lodge spurious human rights lawsuits against multinational companies. Oral arguments for that case are scheduled for March.

ICC has reacted forcefully to the recent spate of measures – in the U.S. EU and elsewhere – asserting jurisdiction over business practices abroad. Such measures have prompted the world business organization to reestablish a task force on extraterritoriality, last active in the 1970s, in order to present business views on where and how such measures may have adversely affect business, consumers and international law.