Property management software company RealPage Inc. and multiple landlords are urging a New Jersey federal court to toss the state's rent price-fixing suit, arguing that the suit contains "fatal deficiencies" and that the state is relying on circumstantial evidence in its attempt to show that the defendants made anticompetitive agreements.

In a Oct. 30 reply brief supporting their dismissal motion, RealPage and the landlords claimed that New Jersey's Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and its acting director for its Division of Consumer Affairs, Jeremy E. Hollander, haven't pointed to "direct evidence" that shows the defendants agreed to use RealPage's revenue management software to fix their rent prices in an anticompetitive way.

"Instead, plaintiffs rely on out-of-circuit trial court decisions involving RealPage RMS and circumstantial evidence that at most suggests customer defendants separately subscribed to (often different) RealPage products," the defendants argued, referring to the plaintiffs citing case law such as the Third Circuit's 2010 decision for In re Insurance Brokerage Antitrust Litigation .

According to RealPage and the other defendants, the plaintiffs in the Third Circuit case argued that insurers decided to share their information with brokers in order to hike premiums for broker customers. Through these alleged agreements, the insurers would also learn about each other, RealPage and the other defendants said.

However, the Third Circuit wasn't convinced by these claims because the plaintiffs failed to show how the insurers would be disadvantaged by letting brokers share their information if other insurers weren't also sharing their information, according to RealPage and the landlords.

The Third Circuit determined that the insurers weren't conspiring with each other and that they each had their own reasons for collaborating with brokers, RealPage and the landlords said.

The Third Circuit's reasoning applies to New Jersey's current antitrust suit, which the defendants argued shares similarities with the Third Circuit case.

"But unlike the allegations concerning the insurers in Brokerage Antitrust, plaintiffs do not allege that any customer defendant knew anything about any other RealPage customer's actual adoption rates, pricing strategy, or prices," the defendants claimed.

"And as in Brokerage Antitrust, plaintiffs here fail to explain why it would be 'economically self-defeating' for a RealPage customer to provide its data to RealPage in licensing its RMS," they further claimed. "To the contrary, Plaintiffs actually concede many 'independent reasons why a customer defendant would choose to license RealPage RMS.'"

RealPage and the landlords also claimed that New Jersey has failed to show how the defendants conspired with each other in a parallel way in order to set specific rent prices. For example, the plaintiffs haven't alleged that the landlords all decided at the same time to license RealPage's software, the defendants argued.