Serhant wins initial victory in Pennsylvania lawsuit 

A judge has ruled that Serhant did not irreparably harm a Philadelphia-based brokerage when it poached three Keller Williams Black Label members last year.

The decision, issued last week, means that Serhant’s team lead Andrea Desy Edrei, agent Michael Skokowski and Kailey Bondiskey, the team’s head of creative, can keep working at the firm while the case is litigated, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. A trial is set for October.

Keller Williams Black Label and its parent company, The Condo Shop LLC, last year sued the trio along with brokerage founder Ryan Serhant for $10 million, accusing them of “plundering its clients, intellectual property, confidential information and personnel, while crippling its ability to operate.”

Lewis Schlossberg, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Business Journal they “remain confident in our case and will pursue our claims for damages.”

Keller Williams contends that several of the defendants used Black Label’s proprietary marketing materials to create marketing materials for Serhant and “sabotaged Black Label’s social media accounts while claiming those accounts had been ‘hacked’.”

The lawsuit also claims they re-listed Keller Williams listings with Serhant after jumping ship.

The defendants last year filed a more than 50-page response, according to the Business Journal, calling the claims “ridiculous.” They say Black Label is “attempting to foist a ‘back-door’ non-compete on Edrei that they did not bargain for, and Edrei did not agree to, while continuing to operate their own multiple, lucrative competing businesses.”

Serhant, founded in 2020 in New York, last year expanded into six more East Coast markets: Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. He’s fighting similar lawsuits in Connecticut and Florida over his expansions there.

— Harrison Connery

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Kailey Bondiskey’s title.