July 31, 2024
Robert A. Braun of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC has helped home sellers reach about $1 billion in settlements over real estate broker commissions and has also helped land deals for buyers in antitrust cases involving pharmaceuticals and electronic components, earning him a spot among antitrust practitioners under age 40 honored by Law360 as Rising Stars.
The biggest case of his career and why it was challenging:
Braun said an antitrust case targeting real estate broker commissions is the biggest case of his career so far. He is helping lead a class of home sellers saying they overpaid for broker services because of rules from the National Association of Realtors that required sellers to pay the fees for a buyer’s broker.
Home sellers in Braun’s case and others have struck settlements and proposed settlements totaling around $1 billion with the NAR and a number of major brokerages, and have also secured changes to the trade group’s rules to improve competition in the residential real estate industry.
“Any case where you are setting out not only to obtain monetary relief for your clients, but to literally change the rules governing how an industry operates, is going to be challenging,” Braun said. “The defendants are going to be very dug in, and they’re going to fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo. I think this case was a perfect example of that.”
The largest settlement struck so far is with the NAR itself, a $418 million deal reached in March that includes policy changes to increase transparency and fairness around broker commissions. Other deals included $208.5 million in settlements struck with Anywhere Real Estate Inc., RE/MAX, and Keller Williams Realty Inc.
“In a lot of ways, it’s an incredibly both impactful and interesting case,” Braun said.
His proudest moment as an attorney:
Successfully negotiating the settlement with the NAR is Braun’s proudest moment as an attorney, he said. That’s because he was able to play a major role in drafting and negotiating a settlement that has the potential to impact how houses are bought and sold across the country, he explained.
The purchase or sale of a home is often the largest transaction completed by Americans, and Braun said they pay brokers a significant “tax” that makes it harder and more expensive to buy or sell a home. The NAR settlement will not only return some of the money home sellers have overpaid, it will also benefit future buyers and sellers by allowing for more competition, he said.
“I’m proud of the work that we’ve done to make the process of selling and buying a home less expensive,” Braun said. “We’re hopeful that pulling down some of the barriers to competition in the industry will energize a new wave of innovative companies and models for buying and selling homes that will benefit consumers.”
Other notable cases he’s worked on:
Braun is part of a Cohen Milstein team representing the Washington, D.C.’s government in a case accusing RealPage Inc. and a number of residential landlords of using the software company’s revenue management platform to effectively fix the rents for apartments in the district.
In a notable case earlier in his career, Braun represented direct purchasers in a case accusing Panasonic and other electronics companies of colluding for over a decade to artificially inflate the price of linear resistors, which are used to regulate electricity in a wide range of everyday products including automobiles, televisions, cellphones and computers.
A California federal court gave final approval in 2019 for a $50.25 million settlement between the electronics companies and direct purchasers.
Braun said the resistors case allowed him to cut his teeth as a young attorney by providing opportunities he might not have had on a larger case at that stage in his career. This included the chance to take depositions of senior executives at large international electronics companies and to put together the theory of the case.
“It was an incredible experience as a young attorney, and I think the case was also ultimately a successful one,” he said. “Compared to the $1 billion in Realtor settlements, it’s a bit smaller, but I was very proud of my work on that case and the result that we achieved.”