HousingWireHousingWire
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) and News Corp., along with several of its subsidiaries such as Move, Realtors Information Network and OpCity, are looking to have the Bandy fraud suit dismissed.
Filed in U.S. District Court in California in August 2024 by 13 real estate professionals, the suit is seeking class-action status and alleges that Move made misrepresentations regarding the quality of the leads provided to Connections Plus subscribers.
On Friday, the defendants fired back and filed three separate motions to dismiss the suit.
The first motion was filed by News Corp. and NAR. It seeks to dismiss the “non-Californian defendants” from the suit for lack of personal jurisdiction. NAR is incorporated in Illinois and News Corp. is incorporated in Delaware.
“Even though Plaintiffs’ allegations relate to Move’s subscription service and Move’s alleged representations regarding that service, Plaintiffs have cast an absurdly broad net and sued Move’s parent company News Corporation, the National Association of REALTORS and Move affiliates OpCity Acquisition, LLC, OpCity, Inc., and Realtors Information Network, Inc.,” the filing states.
News Corp. and NAR also claim that the plaintiffs’ allegations belong in arbitration due to their ”clear and unambiguous agreement to individually arbitrate all disputes arising from their dealings with Move.”
In the motion, however, News Corp. and NAR state that prior to addressing the arbitration agreement, the court should dismiss the claims against them due to lack of personal jurisdiction.
“The Court does not have general jurisdiction over them because they are foreign corporations, and no exceptional circumstances support finding that they are otherwise at home in California. Moreover, the Court lacks specific jurisdiction over the Non-California Defendants because Plaintiffs do not allege that their claims arise from any conduct by the Non-California Defendants in California,” the filing states.
As News Corp. and NAR alluded to in their filing, each of the defendants also filed a motion to compel arbitration.
In this motion, the defendants claim that the plaintiffs “each agreed to arbitrate ‘any and all disputes or claims’ with Move when they signed up for and used Move’s Connections Plus service (which Plaintiffs refer to as the ‘Lead Generation’ service), and the liberal federal policy favoring arbitration reflected in the Federal Arbitration Act (‘FAA’) mandates enforcement of that agreement,” the motion states.
The plaintiffs have previously claimed that they entered into an “oral agreement” with Move. But the defendants say that the plaintiffs agreed to be bound by the Connections Plus terms and conditions when they opted to use the platform “after receiving conspicuous notice of those written Terms.”
The defendants further this argument in their joint motion to dismiss the first amended complaint. They wrote that the motion “is based on the grounds that Plaintiffs’ oral contract claims are barred by Plaintiffs’ written agreement under the merger doctrine.”
Additionally, the defendants claim that the plaintiffs have failed to plead their claims of fraud or claims related to the state’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act claim and Unfair Competition Law.
According to the defendants the plaintiffs have failed to identify any “actionable fraudulent, unlawful, or unfair conduct.” The three motions are set for a hearing on Feb. 21.
