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The judge presiding over the commission case known as Gibson has denied Crye-Leike’s claim that it is made up of six distinct companies that each should be covered under the National Association of Realtors settlement.
The Tuesday order to deny Crye-Leike’s request to pause the homeseller lawsuit targeting it leaves the company with the option of continuing to fight in court or to head to the negotiating table.
At issue was the threshold set in the NAR settlement that covered brokerages that transacted over $2 billion in sales volume in 2022, as recorded in the T360 Real Estate Almanac.
Crye-Leike had claimed that the almanac, which showed Crye-Leike pulled in $7.019 billion in 2022, was actually the combined total of six distinct companies that are each owned by Harold Crye. Each company, Crye-Leike argued in a February filing, transacted less than $2 billion in 2022 and should therefore be covered by the settlement.
In a brief update to the court docket, Judge Stephen R. Bough denied Crye-Leike’s request to stay, or pause, the case against the company.
“Upon review, the Court finds that Crye-Leike is not a released party pursuant to the terms of the NAR settlement,” Bough wrote. “Therefore, a stay in the proceedings is not warranted and the motion is DENIED.”
Crye-Leike didn’t respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Crye-Leike is one of a relatively few large brokerages that have yet to reach settlement agreements with plaintiffs’ attorneys in the case, which was filed within hours of a $5.3 billion jury verdict against the real estate industry.
Others include Howard Hanna, which is still trying its hand in court to battle the litigation. On Monday, Howard Hanna demanded that Bough recuse himself from the case, noting that the judge’s wife received donations for her city council campaign from the plaintiffs’ attorney that filed the case.
EXp and Weichert are also both battling Gibson attorneys who took issue with settlement agreements the two brokerages reached in a separate commission case. The companies are awaiting court rulings on their settlements in that case.
