Brokerages in Georgia commissions case ask for settlement approval 

The parties in a Georgia commissions case have all reached settlement agreements, although the deals with eXp and Weichert remain in limbo.

In a Jan. 8 court filing, the plaintiffs and remaining defendants in the Hooper case announced a combined settlement of $44.05 million and are seeking preliminary approval. The breakdown has eXp paying $34 million, Weichert $8.5 million, Mark Spain Real Estate $800,000 and Atlanta Communities Real Estate $750,000. 

The Hooper case was filed in late 2024 and originally named more than three dozen defendants.

The biggest deals are not yet resolved: The eXp and Weichert settlements were announced last year but are currently being challenged by the plaintiffs in the Gibson/Umpa case in Missouri, which is being overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Bough. Bough has allowed the Gibson/Umpa plaintiffs to continue pursuing litigation against eXp and Weichert, citing concerns that the two brokerages shopped around to find another case that would result in a more favorable settlement — a strategy known as a reverse auction.

For its part, eXp has maintained that it first attempted to mediate with the Gibson plaintiffs but was unsuccessful, and subsequently reached a settlement in Hooper that "will be found to be fair, reasonable and adequate and was not a product of any so-called reverse auction," according to a previous company statement.

Justifying the eXp, Weichert settlement amounts: The Hooper filing makes a case for approving the two settlements by equating them to other previously approved deals. eXp's $34 million settlement is based on its four-year average transaction volume of $124 billion; percentage-wise, that's roughly equivalent to Compass' $57.5 million settlement based on $204 billion in volume, according to court documents.

Weichert's proposed agreement, the filing stated, was similar to settlements reached by HomeSmart, which settled for $4.7 million, and United Real Estate, which settled for $6.5 million.

"The settlements reached here are considerable — in the upper range of possible recoveries given the relative size of the Settling Defendants, and certainly on par with several recently approved settlements of similar claims in the Gibson case," the document stated.

Lower attorney fees: In the proposed Hooper settlement, the attorneys are requesting up to 20% of the $44.05 million to be paid by the defendants. That's significantly less than the 33% in attorney fees requested — and approved — in the Sitzer/Burnett and Gibson/Umpa cases. 

Those massive legal fees, which totaled more than a quarter of a billion dollars between the two cases, were a point of contention for some of the settlement objectors.