As the dust from the Sitzer/Burnett commission lawsuit trial and jury verdict settles, many unanswered questions remain. And based on Judge Stephen Bough’s latest filing, it doesn’t appear the real estate industry will have definitive answers any time soon.
According to a court order filed Tuesday, any post-trial motions the defendants wish to file need to be submitted by Jan. 8, 2024.
From there, the plaintiffs have until Feb. 26, 2024, to file oppositions to the defendants’ motions and then the defendants have until March 18, 2024, to file their responses.
After all post-trial motions are resolved, there will be a 30-day waiting period until a judgment is executed. In other words, the real estate industry may be waiting until April or even May of 2024 to find out what the injunctive relief in this commission lawsuit will be.
While some industry experts have speculated the injunction will call for small tweaks to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) cooperative compensation rule, others believe it may demand the end of any cooperative compensation practices by barring listing agents from paying or offering to pay buyers’ agents.
Despite the lengthy timeline, defendant Keller Williams remains optimistic.
“We have strong grounds for appeal and are focused on next steps,” Darryl Frost, a spokesperson for the firm, wrote in an email.
In the meantime, the industry is facing a growing pile of copycat commission lawsuits, and continued uncertainty surrounding the Department of Justice’s investigation into NAR.
Speculation has also swirled around the settlement agreements that Anywhere and RE/MAX reached in the Sitzer/Burnett, Moehrl and Nosalek lawsuits. A preliminary hearing is set for Nov. 20 when at least some answers might be known.
