HousingWireHousingWire
The Top Agent Network (TAN) pocket listing antitrust lawsuit is on track to have its day in court — and that day will be Nov. 3, 2025. U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco set the November 2025 trial date on Friday during a case management hearing.
Originally filed in 2020 by TAN, the suit takes aim at the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) ban on pocket listings via its Clear Cooperation Policy. The plaintiff claimed that the ban takes away agents’ marketing choices, and they allege that the requirement for listing brokers to submit a listing to their MLS within one business day of marketing a property to the public violates the federal Sherman Antitrust Act.
The suit was dismissed with prejudice in 2021 as a lower court ruled that TAN failed to state a claim with prejudice in its third amended complaint. But the plaintiff appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided in August 2023 to vacate the lower court’s ruling by arguing that the allegations made in TAN’s suit were nearly identical to those made in a suit filed by The PLS.com, which had been allowed to proceed. NAR, the only remaining defendant in the PLS.com suit, was dismissed from the suit in January 2024.
In December 2023, the TAN suit was reopened by Chhabria, and the plaintiff filed its motion for reconsideration in May 2024. In late July, Chhabria granted TAN’s motion for reconsideration, noting that the plaintiff had “adequately alleged antitrust injury.”
“Its asserted injury stems from the Policy’s allegedly anticompetitive effects on the market for real estate listing services: by forcing Top Agent Network and other listing services to compete with the MLSs for listings on unfavorable terms, the Policy prevents Top Agent Network from ‘gaining a foothold in the market and makes it virtually impossible for new competitors to enter, leaving agents with fewer choices, supra-competitive prices, and lower quality products,’” Chhabria wrote in the July ruling.
In addition to setting the trial date, Chhabria also laid out the timeline on Friday for how the lawsuit will progress. The most important upcoming deadline is Dec. 2, 2024, which is when the parties’ amended pleadings are due.
From there, the parties have until Feb. 28, 2025, for fact discovery, with opening reports then due by March 12, 2025, and rebuttal reports due by May 30, 2025.
The close of expert discovery is slated for June 27, 2025, and the last day to hear dipositive motion hearings is set for Aug. 21, 2025. The parties then have two months to prepare for a pretrial conference that is set for Oct. 21, 2025.
The defendants in the suit originally consisted of NAR, the San Francisco Association of Realtors and the California Association of Realtors, which were dismissed from the suit in 2021.
