Stanford Law Professor Douglas Melamed, formerly the chair of WilmerHale’s antitrust group, has written extensively on antitrust issues. After reviewing the complaint, Melamed says that the plaintiffs’ theory, though a “long shot,” is “not crazy.”

Taking what the complaint says on its face, Melamed expects plaintiffs to argue that even if the defendants’ entreaties to the Trump administration to take action to limit production is protected by Noerr-Pennington, that won’t end the inquiry. The question then is whether the government required or mandated the defendants to cut production. If there wasn’t such a law or mandatory directive and the defendants, as a group, agreed to cut production, that could be an antitrust conspiracy.

Melamed suggested that the defendants will likely argue that there was no agreement among themselves to cut production, rather each company made its own decision. If that turns out to be the case, plaintiffs will need to prove an agreement by looking to all the circumstances surrounding the defendants’ conduct. “That’s what the case is going to come down to, I suppose,” Melamed predicted.