By Mike Scarcella and David Thomas

Jan 16 (Reuters) - Lawyers for a group of U.S. home sellers in Missouri have accused real estate broker eXp World Holdings EXPI.O of negotiating a lowball settlement in a Georgia antitrust lawsuit in order to head off a potentially bigger nationwide class action payout in their own case.

Attorneys for the Missouri plaintiffs at Susman Godfrey, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and other firms told the judge in the Georgia case last week that the $34 million settlement with eXp and an $8.5 million deal with another realtor, Weichert, were done “on the cheap” and should be rejected.

Antitrust litigation over real estate brokerage practices has become big business for a segment of the class action plaintiffs bar.

Many of the firms representing the Missouri plaintiffs won a nearly $2 billion trial verdict in October 2023 in a similar case against major home brokers and the trade group National Association of Realtors. The defendants have since settled for more than $1 billion, and the lawyers stand to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees.

In the tug of war over the eXp settlement, U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough in Missouri has ordered the company to hand over settlement records from the Georgia case.

Bough said he wants to determine if eXp engaged in a “reverse auction” to find plaintiffs who would settle for a lower amount. The company has argued that the records are confidential and that Bough lacks authority to review settlement documents from the Georgia case.

The Missouri and Georgia cases, both filed in 2023, alleged that eXp and others violated antitrust law by requiring home sellers to agree to pay commissions to buyers' agents in order to list their homes for sale.

Washington-based eXp in a statement said the company was confident the Georgia judge would find the proposed accord “to be fair, reasonable and adequate.” The company has denied violating antitrust law.

Lawyers for Weichert, based in New Jersey, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did the plaintiffs lawyers leading the case in Missouri.

The plaintiffs attorneys in the Georgia case at law firms Knight Palmer and Kabat, Chapman & Ozmer declined to comment beyond their court filings. They have denied any impropriety.

In their Jan. 8 request for preliminary settlement approval, they said the $34 million deal came after extensive negotiations and costly, risky litigation.

The Georgia plaintiffs said they would seek no more than 20% in attorney fees – a percentage they said was on the low end of the range of fees sought in similar cases.

– In other legal fee news, plaintiffs lawyers at Outten & Golden plan to seek one-third of a $26 million settlement with Mastercard that resolves claims that the payment-processing giant systematically underpaid an estimated 7,500 female, Black, and Hispanic employees.

The firm said it will ask the court for $8.66 million for its work on the lawsuit, which was filed the same day as the settlement on Tuesday in New York federal court.

Outten & Golden said in court papers that it engaged in three mediation sessions with Mastercard between 2023 and 2024, and finalized the settlement agreement on Monday. Mastercard denied wrongdoing.

– In another Outten & Golden case, a federal judge in Manhattan was scheduled to hear oral arguments Thursday over a $4.45 million attorney fee request from the firm, which prevailed in an employment discrimination and retaliation case against Google.

A federal jury in October 2023 awarded former Google Cloud executive Ulku Rowe $1.15 million in damages after finding that the tech giant discriminated against her because of her gender and retaliated against her.

Google denied wrongdoing, and has opposed Rowe's fee request, arguing it should be reduced by 80%.

(Legal Fee Tracker is a weekly feature focused on attorney compensation. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com)

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(Reporting by Mike Scarcella)