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GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) – A lawsuit filed in the Upstate about real estate commissions was heard on Thursday in federal court in Charleston. The suit accuses one of the big four real estate firms of inflating commissions and argues the home seller should not pay that full commission.
A U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation panel will decide whether the case will be tried in South Carolina or join other buyer/broker cases from across the country and be centralized, meaning that all of those cases would be heard by one federal judge.
This case is separate from the National Association of REALTORS settlement, which happened earlier this month.
FOX Carolina News caught up with the Upstate lawyers who filed the suit in South Carolina, Pat Knie and Matt Shealy of Knie & Shealy Law Offices in Spartanburg.
Knie explained why he’s against centralizing the case, “Our argument is that there are about 15 of these cases around the country now, and they’re all very different in nature. We filed an amendment to our complaint yesterday, where we added 41 local brokers. So we feel like with the fact that… the NAR, excuse me, and Keller Williams has settled out, we were looking at the people that actually carried out the conspiracy and that was the local REALTORs. And so that’s going to be our focus. And we argued that all of our discovery evidence would be developed in South Carolina. And the Missouri court really couldn’t be of any benefit to us. So that was the basic argument anyway.”
He said that while there may be 40 additional brokers added to the complaint, that does not mean 40 homeowners are joining in the suit. Knie explained, “We’ve added some class representatives, but all of these brokers conspired together to do the same thing. So even though we don’t have a class representative for every broker, that doesn’t matter.”
Shealy explained why thier lawsuit in South Carolina is separate from the national settlements. He said, “So our view is that this settlement that was entered into in Missouri, which actually hasn’t been approved yet. We believe there are a number of problems with that settlement. It releases a number of brokers without them having to do really anything at all, so we’ve moved to object to that settlement again whenever it actually is proffered for approval, which presumably will be at some point in the future although, again, there’s no guarantee that they will even get to that point, because a number of other lawyers have expressed skepticism as to whether you’re allowed to do what they are trying to do, frankly.”
The Upstate lawyers explained that it may be a few days before we know what the panel decides. Knie said, “We understand that it takes as much as 10 days to two weeks for them to render a decision. However, we may get a decision Monday or Tuesday, we just don’t know.”
While it could take a while before the decision is released, Knie and Shealy said they feel optimistic. Knie said, “Well, we actually felt pretty good. We felt like the panel asked some questions that were hard questions to those that wanted to centralize, but sometimes you can’t read too much into the panel’s questions. But overall, we felt like the arguments that we made and that the other lawyers that were opposing the centralization, we felt like those were very strong arguments.”
Knie and Shealy said that their goal with this suit remains the same. Shealy said, “We’re trying to make it so that sellers no longer have to pay their opposition’s agent. And I think that that’s kind of the major takeaway of this particular lawsuit, is that that setup just doesn’t make sense. And it should never have happened. And it’s it’s time to end it, frankly.”
As far as the national settlements, Knie said there is still more to come this year. He said, “Both the Keller Williams settlement and the National Association of REALTORS settlement, are just fraught with all kinds of problems. Now, the Keller Williams settlement is scheduled for final approval on May 9th in Kansas City, and we plan to be there to object. We have not heard when the National Association of REALTORS settlement will be said, it could be it will be set for May 9th as well. We just don’t know that. But we will be objecting to that one as well.”
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