An additional five home seller commission lawsuit settlement agreements have gained final approval. On Thursday, Judge Stephen Bough, a Kansas City-based U.S. District Court judge, granted final approval to settlements reached by Hanna Holdings, William Raveis Real Estate, EXIT Realty Corp., Windermere Real Estate Services and William L. Lyon & Associates with the Gibson suit plaintiffs. The financial total of the five settlements is $39.7 million.
This comes after Judge Bough granted preliminary approval of the settlements in early October 2025.
According to the ruling, as of early February, 2.698 million claims have been submitted and notice of the settlement reportedly reached over 95% of identified settlement class members. These efforts included over 164 million direct notices sent via mail or email and more than 355 million digital impressions. In total, Judge Bough said the court received three objections while 22 members of the settling class opted out.
In his ruling, Judge Bough wrote that he did not find that any of the objections undermined the fairness or adequacy of the agreements.
“Having fully considered the arguments at the hearing and in the written submissions, and based on all materials in the record, the motion for final approval is granted,” the ruling states.
The ruling also reaffirmed Don Gibson, Lauren Criss, John Meiners, and Daniel Umpa as the settlement class representatives. Additionally, the ruling noted that the settlement class is nationwide and that the agreements release claims arising “from sales of homes listed on NAR and non-Realtor MLSs, including all claims on behalf of Class Members, as sellers, buyers,or otherwise, arising from the same factual predicate.”
Besides granting final approval to the settlements, Judge Bough also entered a partial final judgement, which dismissed the case with prejudice for the five settling brokerage defendants. This judgement means that members of the settlement class will be unable to bring related claims against those defendants in the future.
The Gibson lawsuit was initially filed in October of 2023, just a day after a Missouri jury found Keller Williams, HomeServices of America and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) liable for artificially inflating real estate agent commissions through NAR’s now defunct Participation Rule.