Realtor.com lead dispute heads to closed-door arbitration after appeal fails

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s ruling to send real estate agent plaintiffs’ claims that Realtor.com parent company Move sold them allegedly fake leads, to arbitration. Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit declined the plaintiffs’ petition to rehear the appeal en banc. This comes after the appeals court dismissed the initial appeal in mid-August, writing in their ruling that despite the lower court ordering the parties to arbitration and dismissing the suit, that this ruling was not a final, appealable judgement. Originally filed in the August of 2024, the suit, which was filed by lead plaintiff James Bandy, claims that many of the leads the real estate agent plaintiffs received from Realtor.com were fake, nonexistent or failed to meet expectations. While Judge Stanley Blumenfeld did dismiss the lawsuit, in his ruling he said the dismissal was “functionally indistinguishable from a stay,” allowing the parties to reopen the case after arbitration if the court needed to review or enforce the outcome. Due to this, the appeals court found that the ruling was not a final decision that ended the litigation, preventing them from having appellate jurisdiction....