In addition to its other recent troubles, Chicagoland's MLSNI is being sued by Amerihall Realtors, a Chicago Internet-based real estate brokerage, on charges of monopolistic practices and antitrust violations.

Amerihall Realtors offers a relatively new concept in "license-hanging," an online-only brokerage service in which agents keep 100 percent of their earned commissions and pay a flat fee of $200.00 per month and $100.00 per transaction to the broker.

Amerihall's suit is actually a countersuit, in which the start-up claims that MLSNI has violated antitrust law for filing suit against the company last year to prevent it from using MLSNI databases.

According to Amerihall's counsel, Art Mertes, MLSNI considers Amerihall a competitor. "Amerihall is fundamentally different from most other real estate brokerages," explains Mertes. "With Amerihall, agents keep 100% of their commissions and pay only a nominal fee to Amerihall. The industry standard operates by requiring agents to pay a substantial percentage of their sales commissions to their principal broker. While both Amerihall and MLSNI members provide real estate brokerage services for individual agents, Amerihall provides these services for a nominal fee, which is a small fraction of the cost imposed on individual agents of the MLSNI boards.”

The free service in question is an email listing alert which Amerihall sends out to MLSNI members to benefit Amerihall agents. Amerihall alleges that it offers this service free to its own agents while other MLSNI members pay about $30 per month to use the same service from a company called ECampaignPro.

Amerihall President and managing broker David Hall says he believes that MLSNI has a back-end arrangement with ECampaignPro, and that is among the reasons why MLSNI changed its rules that "service" emails soliciting recruits or advertising listings could not be sent to MLSNI members. He says he is being restricted from emailing MLSNI members while MLSNI members who use the ECampaignPro email listing alerts are under no restriction.

Ellisa Hall, Director of Realtor Relations with Amerihall also suggests, "MLSNI sought to restrict Amerihall, a full paying broker and member of MLSNI from using the MLSNI database. The truth is that while MLSNI was pursuing legal action against Amerihall to restrict use of the database under the guise of protection, MLSNI was selling this same information outright to another company that just happened to be run by the wife of MLSNI CEO Jay Huffman."

Editor's note: "For the record, you have once again printed a statement about REBIG that is outright wrong deliberately. MLSNI has never sold the MLSNI database to REBIG or anyone else, and further, you are completely aware of this. If you are not, then you should educate yourself regarding the data licensing business instead of once again just printing something false to mention me, Jay, and REBIG in a negative way. You are really unbelievable." Brenda Huffman, CEO, REBIG.

According to the release, when MLSNI initially filed suit against Amerihall in December of 2003, Amerihall countersued for injunctive relief just to continue operations. In the coming weeks, Amerihall says it will amend its complaint against MLSNI to seek $64 million in damages.

Hall says he is certain that the outcome of this litigation will profoundly impact the operational freedom of every real estate agent in the US. “No other company should have the power to dictate how other companies run their business," says Hall. "They (MLSNI) are a vendor, and we are their paying client. Somehow, that understanding has been lost along the way. MLSNI has no right to control or regulate our use of the Internet. If MLSNI is allowed to continue to exert increased influence over how Amerihall does business, they will eventually put us out of business. It’s just that simple. And if that happens, it will set a precedent that will allow them and other monopolistic enterprises to exert more influence over agents nationwide. Imagine if agents were required to obtain permission before sending out listings or promotional emails. Now imagine how you’d feel if that permission was denied! How could anyone conduct business? This is a very real issue that will have very real consequences. Every real estate agent in America has a reason to be afraid."

“We hope that when the MLSNI Board sees all the facts, they will act appropriately to end these illegal actions against Amerihall,” says Hall.

MLSNI CEO Jay Huffman could not be reached for comment in time for publication.