After two of its claims against CoStar Group were dismissed in late October, the parent company of Realtor.com is back at it. On Tuesday, Move Inc. filed a second amended complaint in its ongoing battle with the Homes.com parent company.
Like the first amended complaint, the second one contains six claims against CoStar. In the latest filing, Move seeks to address the holes in the two claims that were dismissed by Judge George H. Wu of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The two dismissed claims alleged violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, which were the plaintiffs’ two statutory federal and state trade secret claims. Both claims were aimed at CoStar and James Kaminsky, the former Realtor.com employee at the center of the legal battle. These two claims are again back in play through the updated second amended complaint.
Initially filed by Move in July, the lawsuit centers on Kaminsky, a former Realtor.com employee who went to work at CoStar-backed Homes.com after being laid off by the Move subsidiary. In the suit, Move alleges that Kaminsky stole documents and trade secrets from Realtor.com, which he then provided to CoStar to fuel the rapid growth of Homes.com.
In its amended complaint, Move noted that it has “incurred costs exceeding $5,000 as a result of Mr. Kaminsky’s unauthorized access to Move’s protected computer systems.”
“The infiltration of Move’s internal systems disrupted and economically impacted the company, its personnel, and its business,” the filing states. ”Since the first day Mr. Kaminsky’s unauthorized digital presence was discovered in Move’s confidential business documents, Move employees, including some in management and executive positions, have had to devote some of their working hours to addressing, investigating, and remedying that security breach. The investigation diverted those employees away from their regular business activities.”
Move also noted that it retained a forensics expert to investigate the scope of Kaminsky’s document access and assess any alleged damage he may have caused. Move said the forensic expert found that Kaminsky had deleted “nearly a thousand electronic files from his Move laptop and deleted his entire browsing history, irretrievably destroying those files and data.”
Move also noted that while CoStar has insisted that Kaminsky has committed no-wrongdoing, CoStar has thus far refused to “produce to Move the forensic images they made of Mr. Kaminsky’s CoStar-issued computing devices, which Mr. Kaminsky would have been using during the time he was unlawfully accessing Move’s confidential and trade-secret information.”
Of the other four claims in the filing, two of them were aimed at CoStar and Kaminsky and dealt with trade secret misappropriation claims. The two other claims were aimed solely at Kaminsky and allege a breach of contract and promissory fraud.
In an emailed statement, a Realtor.com spokesperson said the company is looking forward to its day in court.
“We have amended our complaint based on the judge’s guidance and are now moving ahead with all six of our original claims,” the spokesperson wrote.
For its part, CoStar and its general counsel Gene Boxer are still maintaining that the suit is a “sham.”
“The court has already dismissed Move’s claims once and denied Move’s request for an injunction. Move’s amended complaint does not fix the fundamental problems in its case and is just another transparent attempt to lash out at Homes.com, which has surpassed Move’s website in the marketplace,” Boxer wrote in an email.
“Agents love Homes.com, and its “your listing, your lead” model. Realtor.com’s approach of diverting leads is bad for agents, and bad for consumers. Move should focus on fixing its broken business model and spend its legal fees on defending the class action lawsuit that accuses Realtor.com of selling fake leads to brokers.”
Clarification: The headline has been updated to reflect that the former employee allegedly caused at least $5,000 of damage, not $5,000.
