After more than five years of back and forth, Anywhere and the plaintiffs in the Bumpus Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) suit have finally reached a proposed settlement.
According to a notice filed last week and entered into the court docket on Thursday, the parties have reached a “class-wide settlement in principle” and are “working to finalize a fully integrated settlement agreement.”
The class-action suit was filed in 2019 in a U.S. District Court in Northern California. In the suit, the plaintiffs contend they received unwanted, autodialed calls from Coldwell Banker and NRT agents, despite being on the National Do Not Call Registry.
“Companies like Defendant flagrantly ignores the Registry and invade the privacy of consumers with unwanted calls,” the suit states.
In February 2022, the plaintiffs and Anywhere each filed motions for summary judgment in their respective favors. Judge James Donato, who is overseeing the case, denied both motions in May 2022.
“As the parties’ own motion papers amply demonstrate, this case is replete with disputes of material fact that a jury will be required to resolve,” Donato wrote in his ruling. “Each party filed hundreds of pages in briefing, declarations and exhibits with their motions.
”While volume alone is not necessarily fatal to a summary judgment motion, these filings reflect an almost total disagreement between the parties about the facts of the case.”
Three separate classes were certified for the suit. In total, they included more than 445,000 unique cellphone numbers. As a result, Anywhere would have been looking at a minimum exposure of more than $220 million if the suit went to trial.
An Anywhere spokesperson told HousingWire that the company is ”pleased to have reached a settlement agreement. Although we cannot disclose further details at this time, the settlement is consistent with our financial planning.”
Anywhere is not the only brokerage facing allegations of TCPA violations. In April, Keller Williams was named in a TCPA suit in a U.S. district court in Texas.
