Lawyers cry foul over $34 million eXp settlement with US home sellers (updated)

Agnt

16/01/2025 21:08

(Adds details from a court order in paragraphs 13-14)
    By Mike Scarcella and David Thomas
       Jan 16 (Reuters) - Lawyers for a group of U.S. home
sellers in Missouri have accused real estate broker eXp World
Holdings  EXPI.O  of negotiating a lowball settlement in a
Georgia antitrust lawsuit in order to head off a potentially
bigger nationwide class action payout in their own case.
    Attorneys for the Missouri plaintiffs at Susman Godfrey,
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and
other firms told the judge in the Georgia case last week that
the $34 million settlement with eXp and an $8.5 million deal
with another realtor, Weichert, were done “on the cheap” and
should be rejected. 
    Antitrust litigation over real estate brokerage practices
has become big business for a segment of the class action
plaintiffs bar.
    Many of the firms representing the Missouri plaintiffs won a
nearly $2 billion trial verdict in October 2023 in a similar
case against major home brokers and the trade group National
Association of Realtors. The defendants have since settled for
more than $1 billion, and the lawyers stand to recover hundreds
of millions of dollars in legal fees.
    In the tug of war over the eXp settlement, U.S. District
Judge Stephen Bough in Missouri has ordered the company to hand
over settlement records from the Georgia case. 
    Bough said he wants to determine if eXp engaged in a
“reverse auction” to find plaintiffs who would settle for a
lower amount. The company has argued that the records are
confidential and that Bough lacks authority to review settlement
documents from the Georgia case.
    The Missouri and Georgia cases, both filed in 2023, alleged
that eXp and others violated antitrust law by requiring home
sellers to agree to pay commissions to buyers' agents in order
to list their homes for sale. 
    Washington-based eXp in a statement said the company was
confident the Georgia judge would find the proposed accord “to
be fair, reasonable and adequate.” The company has denied
violating antitrust law.
    Lawyers for Weichert, based in New Jersey, did not
immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did
the plaintiffs lawyers leading the case in Missouri.
    The plaintiffs attorneys in the Georgia case at law firms
Knight Palmer and Kabat, Chapman & Ozmer declined to comment
beyond their court filings. They have denied any impropriety.
    In their Jan. 8 request for preliminary settlement approval,
they said the $34 million deal came after extensive negotiations
and costly, risky litigation.
    The Georgia plaintiffs said they would seek no more than 20%
in attorney fees – a percentage they said was on the low end of
the range of fees sought in similar cases.
    
– In other legal fee news, a U.S. judge on Thursday awarded
nearly $46 million to compensate attorneys who represented
T-Mobile customers in a $350 million class action settlement,
after a federal appeals court struck down their earlier bid for
nearly twice that amount.
        U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes found the $46 million
request to be reasonable. Wimes said the settlement fund
"exceeds the cash relief made available in other comparable data
breach settlements, even those that took longer and required
more work." T-Mobile denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to
settle.
  
    
    – Plaintiffs lawyers at Outten & Golden plan to seek
one-third of a $26 million settlement with Mastercard that
resolves claims that the payment-processing giant systematically
underpaid an estimated 7,500 female, Black, and Hispanic
employees.
    The firm said it will ask the court for $8.66 million for
its work on the lawsuit, which was filed the same day as the
settlement on Tuesday in New York federal court. 
    Outten & Golden said in court papers that it engaged in
three mediation sessions with Mastercard between 2023 and 2024,
and finalized the settlement agreement on Monday. Mastercard
denied wrongdoing. 
    
– In another Outten & Golden case, a federal judge in Manhattan
was scheduled to hear oral arguments Thursday over a $4.45
million attorney fee request from the firm, which prevailed in
an employment discrimination and retaliation case against
Google.
    A federal jury in October 2023 awarded former Google Cloud
executive Ulku Rowe $1.15 million in damages after finding that
the tech giant discriminated against her because of her gender
and retaliated against her.
    Google denied wrongdoing, and has opposed Rowe's fee
request, arguing it should be reduced by 80%.     
      
    (Legal Fee Tracker is a weekly feature focused on attorney
compensation. Please send tips or suggestions to
D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com)
       
    Read more:
    Law firms wrangle over fees from $2.7 bln Blue Cross Blue
Shield settlement
    Settlements spur big fee awards, with more to come in 2025
    Meta case yields Texas-size fees as more firms ink state
contracts

 (Reporting by Mike Scarcella)