US yacht brokers defeat inflated commission lawsuit

A Florida judge has thrown out a class action lawsuit in which the International Yacht Brokers Association (IYBA) and other brokerages were accused of inflating sales commission.
US District Judge K. Michael Moore said that the plaintiffs, a group of yacht sellers, were unable to show that the broking body and others conspired to fix commissions.
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The case alleged that IYBA and others, including Boat Trader, Yacht World and Boats.com operator Boats Group LLC, violated antitrust law by imposing a 10% commission on a vessel’s sale price to be split by brokers on either side of the sale, according to Reuters.
Lawyers for the defendants said the plaintiffs were seeking to exploit the rash of lawsuits in the US home real estate industry, in which the National Association of Realtors was accused of conspiring with brokerages to inflate commissions on home sales. More than $1bn of settlements have so far been paid out, according to Reuters.
The yacht defendants argued that yachting operates differently with no dominant trade association or single platform that can set industry-wide commission levels.
David Maass, a maritime lawyer at Alley, Maass, Rogers & Lindsay, suggests the plaintiffs could technically refile but says in his opinion it would be an “uphill battle”.
“The plaintiffs would need to allege a specific agreement among brokers to work only with each other and require their clients to pay certain commissions—in other words, a secret pact in a smoke-filled room,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
“In their complaint, the plaintiffs described parallel conduct by yacht brokers—licensed brokers working with each other and brokering deals with industry-standard commissions—and suggested that this conduct showed a conspiracy by yacht brokers to enrich themselves. But parallel conduct alone isn’t enough to make out a viable antitrust claim.”