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The two remaining real estate companies still battling lawsuits filed by homesellers lost their latest bids in court on Monday when the judge overseeing the case denied their requests to transfer the suit to their home states.
Judge Stephen R. Bough issued the order denying the requests by Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Crye-Leike to have a commission lawsuit known as Gibson transferred to Iowa and Tennessee, respectively.
“The Court holds that severing this case into multiple duplicative cases does not serve the interest of justice [or] judicial economy,” Bough wrote in his order.
The denial was the latest in a series of court losses for the firms as the number of real estate companies that weren’t covered by the National Association of Realtors settlement last year and haven’t yet reached their own settlements dwindles toward zero.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Crye-Leike are the two remaining real estate companies that have yet to strike their own settlement agreements in lawsuits filed by homesellers who targeted the way agents historically had been paid. Monday’s order threw their attempts to defeat the case further into question.
In December, Bough denied the companies’ requests to dismiss the case.
In March, Hanna Holdings demanded that Bough recuse himself over allegations that donations to the city council campaigns of his wife by plaintiffs’ attorneys amounted to disqualifying conflicts of interest. Berkshire Hathaway and Crye-Leike soon joined that effort, which Bough later denied.
In April, Berkshire Hathaway requested that Bough agree to transfer the case to the Southern District of Iowa, where Berkshire Hathaway Energy resides. BHE is the holding company of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. Its attorneys argued in their transfer request that the holding company had nothing to do with real estate and, as such, has no relation whatsoever with the state of Missouri, where the case was filed.
Crye-Leike sought to transfer the case from Missouri to the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
Earlier this month, Hanna Holdings agreed to settle the Gibson case after losing its attempts for Bough to recuse himself and to have the case transferred to Pennsylvania.
EXp and Weichert Realtors have reached settlement agreements in a separate case known as Hooper. They have yet to receive approval for those settlement agreements, and Gibson plaintiffs have fought to bring them back to the negotiating table with Gibson attorneys, accusing the two companies of cherry-picking their settlements to save money on settlement costs.
