Judge halts trial between rival brokers before jury deliberations begin – Orange County Register

First Team Real Estate’s court battle with rival Coldwell Banker ended on Feb. 15 when a judge issued a directed verdict, ending the trial before it got to the jury.

In a rare move, a judge halted a court battle between Orange County’s top two real estate brokerages, issuing a “directed verdict” in favor of the defendant.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Sheila Recio found that plaintiff First Team Real Estate failed to provide enough evidence during the trial to merit giving the case to the jury.

The Feb. 15 ruling was a humiliating finale to First Team’s six-year legal battle over massive defections to rival Coldwell Banker between September 2015 and June 2017.

In its lawsuit, First Team accused Coldwell Banker of staging a clandestine campaign to poach about 80 agents and managers, who took with them thumb drives containing “gigabytes” of trade secrets. First Team led the county in home sales when the defections occurred, but slipped to number two behind Coldwell Banker by 2023.

But on the 12th day of First Team’s trial, Recio made the uncommon finding that its attorneys failed to present enough evidence to merit jury deliberations.

The ruling dismissed “all claims as to Coldwell Banker Realty and three highly regarded managers,” a Coldwell Banker spokesperson said in a statement.

First Team’s lead attorney issued a statement of his own, disagreeing with Recio’s ruling and vowing to appeal.

“First Team believes that the court should have provided an opportunity for the jury to hear testimony from all of First Team’s available witnesses and consider all of the relevant evidence, and then allow the jury to deliberate and decide the case,” Fears said in a statement. “First Team fully intends to appeal the court’s ruling and pursue all remedies available to it.”

Trial minutes show Fears and Recio clashed over how long he was taking to present his case to the jury. Fears pleaded for more time, but Recio rejected his request, saying her original 10- to 12-day limit “was a fair trial estimate,” minutes show.

Recio gave First Team to the end of Feb. 14 to finish calling witnesses and rest their case.

‘Very rare’

Typically, a judge issues a directed verdict after finding that no reasonable jury could decide in the plaintiff’s favor, according to legal affairs publisher Nolo.com.

But trial attorneys and legal scholars told the Orange County Register that it’s uncommon for a judge to exert that power.

Directed verdicts are “very rare,” said Los Angeles personal injury lawyer Brian Panish.

Erin Chemerinski, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, noted that judges typically “weed out” weak cases before trial through a “summary judgment,” or a finding that the evidence doesn’t merit going to trial.

“Summary judgments are far more common than directed verdicts,” Chemerinski said in an email. “They usually weed out cases where there is not a factual dispute. … I also think having gone through the trial, judges are inclined to let it go to a verdict. But directed verdicts happen.”

Directed verdicts, “nonsuits” and judgments setting jury verdicts aside “are all rare, but they are not unheard of,” added Bart Williams, a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers who heads the Los Angeles office for the Proskauer law firm.

“Some courts like to wait and see how the evidence comes in — or to see how a jury will come out — before stepping in to take charge of the outcome,” Williams said in an email.

Siding with the defense

It was unclear if Recio, who’s been on the bench for six years, acted on her own or in response to a defense motion.

Court minutes show, however, that Recio had sided earlier with three former managers accused of violating “non-solicitation” agreements after leaving First Team. The agreements banned the managers from recruiting agents to Coldwell Banker for two years after their resignations.

California courts long have held that such “non-compete” or “non-solicitation” clauses are unenforceable.

Recio concurred. According to court minutes, she ruled on Feb. 13 that “the post-employment non-solicitation provisions are void.”