The Fourth Circuit has upheld the district court’s refusal to dismiss Robertson v. Sea Pines Real Estate. The case involves putative class actions alleging that South Carolina real estate listing services and brokerages conspired by enacting and enforcing rules that prohibited cost-saving innovative brokerage practices and thereby increased prices. In particular, the complaint attacks rules prohibiting arrangements that provide less than “the full array of services that brokerages traditionally have provided” and that prohibit members from agreeing to forego a commission “if the seller finds the buyer.”
The defendants sought dismissal on two grounds. First, that the MLS services were single entities incapable of conspiring under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, and second, that the plaintiffs failed to sufficiently allege a conspiracy under the standards announced in Twombly.
“Appellants have failed to point to a single court of appeals decision,” the panel explained, that held an MLS beyond the scope of Section 1 on the ground that an MLS is a single entity.
The court also held that the plaintiffs alleged sufficient facts to establish a conspiracy. “The complaints identify the defendants as individual brokerages serving together on the MLS board of trustees,” the panel explained, and the allegations charge that the individual brokerages “’agreed … to develop, implement, enact and facilitate the enforcement of [the allegedly] unlawful rules’ . . .”