After its two claims against it The CoStar team were fired in late October, the parent company of Realtor.com it’s back to it. on tuesday, Move Inc. filed a second amended complaint in its ongoing battle with Homes.com parent company.
Like the first amended complaint, the second contains six claims against CoStar. In the latest filing, Move seeks to fix holes in two lawsuits dismissed by Judge George H. Wu of the US District Court in Los Angeles.
The two dismissed allegations of violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, which were two of the plaintiffs’ statutory and state trade secret claims. Both lawsuits were directed at CoStar and James Kaminsky, a former Realtor.com employee at the center of the legal battle.
First filed by Move in July, the lawsuit centers on Kaminsky, a former Realtor.com employee who worked at CoStar-backed Homes.com after being laid off by the Move subsidiary. In the lawsuit, Move alleges that Kaminsky stole documents and trade secrets from Realtor.com, then gave them to CoStar to fuel Homes.com’s rapid growth.
In its amended complaint, Move noted that it “incurred over $5,000 in costs as a result of Mr.
“The intrusion of Move’s internal systems disrupted and had an economic impact on the company, its employees and its businesses,” the document said. ”From the first day there was an unauthorized digital presence of Mr. Kaminsky in Move’s confidential business documents, Move employees, including some in management positions and executives, have had to dedicate some of their work hours to address, investigate, and fix those security breaches. The investigation diverted those employees from their normal business activities.”
Move also noted that it has retained a forensics expert to investigate the scope of Kaminsky’s document access and examine any alleged damage it may have caused. Move said a forensics expert found that Kaminsky had deleted “nearly a thousand electronic files from his Move laptop and deleted all of his browsing history, destroying those files and data beyond repair.”
Move also noted that while CoStar insists that Kaminsky has done nothing wrong, CoStar has so far refused to “produce to Move the forensic images they made of Mr. Kaminsky was released by CoStar, Mr. when he illegally accessed Move’s private and confidential information.”
Of the other four claims in the filing, two of them were aimed at CoStar and Kaminsky and dealt with claims of trade secret misappropriation. The other two claims were directed solely at Kaminsky and alleged breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Realtor.com said the company is looking forward to its day in court.
“We have amended our complaint following the judge’s direction and are now moving forward with all six of our claims,” the spokesperson wrote.
For its part, CoStar and its general counsel Gene Boxer insist the suit is “luxury.”
“The court has already rejected Move’s requests and rejected Move’s request to have the case blocked. “Move’s amended complaint does not address the issues at hand and is just another blatant attempt to criticize Homes.com, which has out-marketed Move’s website,” Boxer wrote in an email.
“Agents love Homes.com, and its “listing, lead” model. Realtor.com’s way of redirecting leads is bad for agents, and bad for buyers. Move should focus on fixing its broken business model and use its legal fees to defend a class action lawsuit accusing Realtor.com of selling fake leads to realtors.”
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