The DOJ: Not Ready to Make Nice

The Statement of Interest in Nosalek v. MLS PIN should make things clear

What with the Redfin leaving NAR announcement, this important piece of news has gone under-reported and under-analyzed. Hard to blame anyone since literally no one who isn’t a court-watcher pays attention to things like an unsolicited “Statement of Interest” filings in a little-watched civil lawsuit.

Yet, given our special focus on these lawsuits, this is indeed an important development.

The Department of Justice has filed a Statement of Interest with the court in the Nosalek v. MLS PIN case in Massachusetts. From Reuters:

The U.S. Justice Department told a Massachusetts federal judge on Thursday that it wants to investigate a proposed settlement in a lawsuit challenging commissions to real estate brokers because it has "significant concerns."

But that’s not where we stop here at Notorious. We dig deeper.

Digging deeper, we find more interesting details that will impact not just the Nosalek settlement, but any possible future settlement between NAR and the two big antitrust cases of Burnett and Moehrl.

Long story short: the DOJ is not ready to make nice. They are not ready to back down.

Let’s get into it.