Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
The ongoing saga of the commission lawsuit settlements involving eXp and Weichert continued this week, as the homesellers behind one of the industry’s biggest antitrust cases worked to keep their fight with the companies alive.
The fight boils down to the homesellers’ claims that eXp World Holdings and Weichert Real Estate Affiliates engaged in a “reverse auction” when settling their antitrust litigation. In other words, the homesellers — in this case, those who filed a major suit known as Gibson — believe the two brokerages shopped around among similar class action lawsuits to find the best deal.
EXp and Weichert both settled in a case known as Hooper, but the Gibson plaintiffs want to force the companies back to the negotiating table in their own case. The parties have been going back and forth over the issue for months, though the Hooper judge granted the settlements preliminary approval last month.
After winning preliminary approval, eXp and Weichert on May 29 filed a motion to stay — or, pause — Gibson proceedings. The motion states that if the settlements win final approval later this year, that will “extinguish” the Gibson plaintiffs’ claims against the companies. Put another way, the brokerages want to put their part in the Gibson litigation on ice indefinitely.
But the news this week is that on Thursday, the Gibson plaintiffs filed their own document in court pushing back on the brokerages’ motion to stay. The document criticizes what it describes as “inadequate reverse-auction settlements” and notes that a previous motion to stay the case was denied. The document also states that the judge in the Hooper case has not yet considered the Gibson homesellers’ arguments.
Inman has reached out to the brokerages and will update this story with any comments they provide.
Among other things, the new document also claims that the companies “misstate the legal standards regarding a stay,” and that the Gibson homesellers “would suffer significant prejudice if all proceedings were stayed.”
It remains to be seen how the judge in the Gibson case will respond to both the brokerages’ motion to stay and the homesellers’ argument against the stay.
But either way, the settlements have proven to be among the most contentious in the industry. Following the Sitzer | Burnett jury verdict in 2023, the National Association of Realtors and various large companies moved within a matter of months to settle. And while various appeals in the cases are ongoing, the most headline-grabbing litigation involving those companies is now in the rearview mirror.
In the case of eXp and Weichert, however, legal wrangling over the settlements shows no sign of stopping.
Read the Gibson plaintiffs’ latest filing here:
hert
