If you were wondering how Barclays' co-defendants in three consolidated antitrust class actions claiming damages based on alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate (Libor) planned to cope with the burgeoning scandal surrounding Barclays' admission that its traders did just that, the answer is: in a footnote. On Monday, all of the other banks in the private antitrust litigation -- with the exception of UBS, which is reportedly cooperating with various government investigations -- filed a joint motion to dismiss the class actions. The filing brushed o ff stunning email evidence of Barclays' Libor manipulation in a single sentence: "Nothing in the Barclays settlement alleges any agreement among (U.S. dollar) Libor panel banks to maintain USD Libor at a suppressed level," the banks said.

Indeed, according to the banks, there's no evidence anywhere that they conspired to manipulate Libor, which is calculated for dollars, yen and euros and serves as a benchmark for interest rates on trillions of dollars of securities. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, the defendants argue that all of the antitrust class actions should be tossed because they fail to allege sufficient evidence of a plot to restrain trade or restrict competition. At best, the motion said, the plaintiffs have accused individual defendants "of making false reports for their own purposes ... (which) might impact financial results to those who chose to incorporate the index in their transactions but ... is not a restraint of trade."

That's the next prong of the banks' defense. Even if the complaints included enough specific allegations of joint action to survive a Twombly test, the banks said, they didn't assert any restriction on competition, a necessary element of any Sherman Act case. "Plaintiffs' claims are alleged false reporting in connection with (setting Libor)," the defense motion argued. "Such false reporting in and of itself is not alleged to be, and plainly is not, a competitive act, and does not restrain trade in any market. There are no buyers or sellers, no market, no profit, and no competition of any kind associated with the mere reporting of rates or setting of USD Libor."

It's a very bold argument. Under this defense theory, no matter how many banks admit to manipulating Libor rates in any of the various regulatory and criminal investigations under way around the world -- Reuters has reported that Royal Bank ofScotland may be the next to reach a deal with British authorities -- or even how many banks admit to plotting with one another to suppress the index, there's no civil antitrust liability because there's no actual market for an average of interbank borrowing rates. And even if there were, the bank defendants argued, none of the plaintiffs in the antitrust case can tie damages to the banks' actions, which means none has standing to assert antitrust claims.

Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld, who is co-lead counsel in the biggest of the purported Libor class actions, told me the banks' theory is preposterous. "Look at the Canadian proceeding --there's evidence of communication between traders at different banks (in USD Libor)," he said. (Unfortunately, not much from the Canadian case is public.) "Use common sense -- they have a lot more to account for than they're asserting in their denials." Hausfeld sounded exasperated when I pressed him on the banks' argument that this isn't a proper antitrust case. Such a technical defense in the face of admissions of Libor manipulation won't fly, he said, because the plaintiffs can simply rework their complaints to allege fraud or racketeering claims instead. "Complaints can be amended," he said. "They can be conformed to the evidence."

Hausfeld's co-counsel, Arun Subramanian of Susman Godfrey, said the plaintiffs are still considering how they'll respond to the banks' motion but said the argument that there's no market for the Libor index, and thus no antitrust claim, doesn't hold up. "These banks transacted in instruments pegged to the Libor rates, then they manipulated the rates," Subramanian said. "That's no different than price manipulation in a conventional antitrust case." (The emails disclosed in the Barclays' settlements make it pretty clear that traders weren't asking the bank to suppress Libor rates just for the thrill of it but to affect their position in derivative swaps trading.)

Among defense counsel for the banks are Davis Polk & Wardwell; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Shearman & Sterling; Hogan Lovells; Sullivan & Cromwell; Sidley Austin; Locke Lord; Katten Muchin; Clifford Chance; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Covington & Burling; Hughes Hubbard & Reed; and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

(Reporting by Alison Frankel)

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