A recent report by WUSA-TV in Washington D.C. featured an interview with Lieff Cabraser partner Dean Harvey. The segment focused on current litigation against real-estate tech company RealPage and several of the nation’s largest residential landlords over allegations that they orchestrated a price-fixing scheme designed to unlawfully increase rents for tens of thousands of renters.
A lawsuit filed by Lieff Cabraser in 2022 alleges that the scheme involves rental property owners collectively outsourcing daily pricing and ongoing revenue oversight to RealPage, which then uses its proprietary software that deploys a pricing algorithm that pushes the highest possible rents on tenants.
While RealPage says their software only provides lessors with suggestions on how to price available housing, Dean notes that RealPage goes much further than that, “It doesn’t just provide information, but in many instances it sets the prices directly,” he said. “And the company doesn’t just get the information and decide what to do. RealPage makes it difficult for a company to make a choice other than what is recommended. That is not how a lawful market works.”
Watch the full clip featuring Dean, on WUSA-TV’s website.
Learn more about the Residential Lease Price-Fixing Lawsuit.
About Dean Harvey
A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s San Francisco office, Dean M. Harvey represents individuals and companies in antitrust, business tort, employment, and intellectual property litigation. His cases seek to remedy and prevent wrongful conduct by dominant firms. These precedent-setting lawsuits concern a wide variety of industries and markets. Remedies include reimbursing purchasers who have overpaid for price-fixed products; preventing monopolists from stifling innovation and eliminating competition; and obtaining damages for businesses, inventors, and copyright owners.
Mr. Harvey was a leader in the High-Tech Antitrust class action against Google, Apple, Intel and other tech giants for allegedly conspiring to suppress the mobility and compensation of their technical employees. This landmark case resulted in the largest recovery (by far) of any class action asserting antitrust claims in the employment context: $435 million. Mr. Harvey continues the fight to ensure that employees receive competitive compensation, currently representing a doctor in a class action alleging an unlawful no-hire agreement between the medical schools of Duke University and the University of North Carolina.
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