According to HousingWire, Robert Friedman, who is involved in a separate commission lawsuit against the Real Estate Board of New York, has asked the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision after panels upheld the final approvals for the settlements in the Sitzer, Burnett and Gibson cases. The appeals court decisions came down in mid-August and early September, and Friedman is now pushing back on those rulings.
Friedman's original lawsuit started in 2023 when he sued REBNY, which operates independently from the National Association of Realtors. In that case, he alleged that REBNY and various brokerage defendants conspired to artificially inflate real estate commissions in expensive Brooklyn neighborhoods. When the appeals court upheld the settlements anyway, Friedman is now arguing that the court applied the wrong legal standard and shouldn't have simply deferred to the trial judge's reasoning.
The crux of Friedman's position is that because REBNY has no formal affiliation with NAR and operates under its own separate rules and code of ethics, his claims against REBNY should be treated as a completely distinct matter from the broader conspiracies alleged in the Gibson and Sitzer/Burnett cases. He contends that the court made an error by grouping his REBNY claims with these larger settlements.
If Friedman's petition for rehearing is granted and he wins on the merits, his claims against REBNY could potentially proceed separately rather than being bundled with the NAR-related settlements. According to HousingWire, Friedman is currently the only objector who has filed such a petition, though other appellants in the Gibson case have until later in the month to file their own motions for rehearing.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area is that these kinds of commission disputes tend to create uncertainty in how brokers and agents structure their business practices. These ongoing legal battles, especially ones that might allow certain cases to proceed separately, can add complexity to how we all navigate the real estate market and make decisions about what's fair and transparent in our transactions.
