An argument a teenager might make after being caught drinking at a party was essentially employed by the lawyer for an energy company, who asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to upend a $1.8 million penalty imposed on it for price gouging because ”everybody did it.”

Vincent Gentile of Drinker Biddle & Reath represents electric distribution company HIKO Energy, a company that up-charged 5,700 Pennsylvania consumers by 300 percent for heat—well over the company’s guaranteed rate—during record-low temperatures in the winter of 2014. As a result, the state Public Utility Commission hit HIKO with the penalty, which the company claimed was unfair given how other utility companies who were found to have price gouged were treated.