LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Marathon Oil has filed a countersuit against the State of Kentucky in federal court, seeking to throw out Attorney General Greg Stumbo’s civil suit accusing the company and two subsidiaries of violating the state’s anti-price-gouging law, reports The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Marathon also wants Kentucky’s price-gouging law declared unconstitutional. The company claims the law is too vague and is challenging Stumbo’s interpretation of the statute.

Marathon spokeswoman Angelia Graves told newspaper that the company raised prices in Kentucky and elsewhere after Hurricane Katrina disabled 15 percent of the nation’s refining capacity while U.S. demand remained constant. “We were responding to what was happening in the national and global market,” she said. “When the supply decreases, the price responds.”

Stumbo made national headlines last week when he announced his suit against Marathon and its subsidiaries, accusing them of gouging $89 million out of Kentucky motorists. The subsidiaries named in the suit are Marathon Petroleum, its refining, marketing and transportation arm, and Speedway SuperAmerica, its convenience and petroleum retail chain.

“We’re confident the federal court will send this back to the state,” Pierce Whites, Kentucky deputy attorney general, told the newspaper.

The price-gouging statute took effect in 2004 and forbids the sale of certain goods or services during a state of emergency at a price “grossly in excess” of the price before the emergency declaration if the increase is “unrelated to any increased cost to the seller.” The Marathon case is the first action filed under the law.

“Antitrust law is rooted, at least in part, in economic theory,” University of Kentucky law professor Harold Weinberg told the newspaper. “This Kentucky statute doesn’t seem really to be rooted in anything; it’s more of a populist enactment.”