There appears to be no sign of surrender in a group of rogue realtors’ war with their former boss, Properties of The Villages.
This week, lawyers for Properties of The Villages and KD Premier Realty filed competing motions in court over a judge’s order that the fledgling firm pay $425,000 in attorneys’ fees to the powerful sales arm of The Villages. Judge James Moody found in favor of Properties of The Villages after a week-long trial in April in federal court in Tampa. He also ordered Jason Kranz and Christopher Day, former top producers for Properties of The Villages who broke away in December 2019 to form KD Premier Realty, to pay $603,700 in damages to the real estate powerhouse headed by Villages Vice President of Sales Jennifer Parr.
An attorney for Kranz, Day and the other Properties of The Villages representatives who followed them, said they had no alternative but to go to trial in the case.
“Had Defendants not taken this case through trial, they would have been subjected to illegal restraints of trade in the form of unenforceable non-solicitation restrictions and overbroad non-competition restrictions. Instead, their challenges resulted in this Court declining to enforce several of the at-issue restrictions and significantly blue-penciling the scope of the non-competition restrictions,” wrote attorney Christopher Prater of Pollard LLC.
Kranz, Day and the others will be taking their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In addition, the rogue realtors are asking to have their legal fees paid by Properties of The Villages. They have also asked that a stay on enforcement of the judgment be in place until the appellate court has a chance to hear their appeal.
However, Properties of The Villages attorney John Lauro mocked their awkward ”attempt to recast their loss as a win,” according to court documents filed Monday.
“As an initial matter, Defendants did lose as badly as they could have, given the Court awarded Properties of The Villages essentially everything Properties of The Villages asked for. Defendants’ arguments to the contrary are simply untrue,” Lauro wrote.
As of Tuesday, KD Premier Realty was still listing homes in The Villages on its website. The judge ruled that KD Premier Realty, Kranz, Day and their associates are enjoined from doing business as real estate brokers or agents in The Villages for a period of 18 months beginning June 1.
