Zillow-MRED Antitrust Battle Shifts From Courtroom to Arbitration

Bradley Weber, a partner in Troutman Pepper Locke’s Antitrust Practice Group, was quoted in the September 18, 2026, HousingWire article, “Zillow-MRED Antitrust Battle Shifts From Courtroom to Arbitration.”

• “I think the judge felt like the claims against MRED and Compass were so intertwined that if the judge continued the federal lawsuit, there may be rulings that are inconsistent with the arbitration, so he used his discretion to stay the case,” said Brad Weber, a partner at Troutman Pepper Locke.
• Now that the claims are headed to arbitration, legal experts told HousingWire that it’s unlikely much, if any, information comes out regarding the proceedings.
• “Arbitrations, for the most part, are private,” Weber said, “There will be no public filings, but companies may issue press releases if they win some big issue in arbitration, but you won’t be able to read the finer points of an order or something with arbitration.”
• …
• Given that Tharp granted MRED’s motion to compel arbitration, Weber was not surprised that he denied Zillow’s preliminary injunction.
• In order to win a preliminary injunction motion, the plaintiff must show that it’s likely to win its case if the suit goes to trial.
• “I think because the court granted the motion to compel arbitration, that made it even more likely that the court would deny this preliminary injunction,” Weber explained, “because now that the suit is going in front of an arbitrator, if I were the judge, I would want an even higher standard met in order to impose an injunction, because the judge would be reluctant to have an injunction out there while the case is stayed and him to not really have the ability to modify it if the circumstances changed.”
• …
• “Settlements are pretty common in antitrust disputes, so they might try to work out some sort of agreement where they compromise on some of the positions they have taken,” Weber said.
• “If this would benefit both sides, I could see them working out an agreement. But Zillow may be willing — if they feel this is a really important issue and one they can’t ignore — to go through the full arbitration and hope that the arbitrators come to a different conclusion than the judge.”