Broker Team Sues Former Employer CBRE Over $4M Unpaid Commission

One of D.C.’s top law firm tenant rep teams is suing its former employer, CBRE, alleging that the brokerage withheld commissions the members had earned for executing a large lease in the nation's capital. 

Lou Christopher, Jordan Brainard and Asher Inman are the plaintiffs on the 28-page complaint, filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. CBRE and Peter Schippits, CBRE group president for the East region, are named as the defendants. 

No other documents have yet been filed in the case, which was first reported by the Washington Business Journal. 

The complaint says that for a lease Christopher, Brainard and Inman closed late last year, CBRE failed to pay the team more than $4M in “commission wages and production-based compensation” that was owed to them. 

Instead, it says, the brokerage diverted half of their earned commission to two other brokers who “did not originate or perform the work”: CBRE Vice Chairmen Todd Lippman, based in Chicago, and Joe Cabrera, based in New York.

The complaint says Cabrera “did not work on the D.C. Office Transaction at all” and described Lippman's involvement as “narrow, late-stage review assistance.”

It doesn't refer to the specific lease transaction at the heart of the suit, but the details indicate it is Sidley Austin’s 240K SF prelease at 2100 M St. NW, a bombshell deal that closed at the end of the year. 

The complaint says the lease in question closed on Oct. 30, names BXP as one of the parties in the deal, and says the tenant’s existing lease was set to expire in 2031, all facts that are true of the Sidley Austin deal. 

“Unfortunately, once the work was complete and the money was in hand, CBRE breached the Plaintiffs’ contracts, disregarded its own written policies, and diverted half of the resulting commission to brokers who did not originate or perform the work,” the complaint summary says.

It also says that when the team asked to be paid all of its wages, CBRE “retaliated by withholding even undisputed wages, inventing conditions for payment, and refusing to explain why it withheld millions of dollars in earned compensation.” 

In response to a request for comment from the brokerage, a CBRE spokesperson sent Bisnow an emailed statement saying it “believes the plaintiffs’ claims lack merit and we look forward to defending against the allegations.”

“CBRE stands behind its foundational values of respect, integrity, service and excellence, as well as its policies and processes for resolving internal disputes among brokers,” the spokesperson added.

The complaint details the work over a two-year period that the team undertook to execute the complex deal — “including strategy, tours, RFPs, negotiations, financial analyses, and bespoke lease negotiations.” 

When the deal closed, it says Schippits, “without explanation,” diverted half of the plaintiff’s commission earnings to Lippman and Cabrera. 

The suit alleges that CBRE “retroactively” claimed the plaintiffs violated the brokerage’s single point of contact protocol, which designates a certain broker to serve as a coordinator for a client relationship. 

Lippman and Cabrera claimed they had a “legacy SPOC designation.”

The brokerage used the violation of SPOC to deny the plaintiffs the compensation under their contracts, the complaint says.

But it says the plaintiffs had raised the SPOC concern and received approval from CBRE Executive Managing Director Jamie Georgas and CBRE President of the Mid-Atlantic Region Kyle Schoppmann to proceed with the deal. 

Christopher, Brainard and Inman last month left CBRE for Stream Realty Partners.

A lawyer for the team, Wiley Rein partner Tatiana Sainati, told Bisnow Tuesday that the dispute was one of the reasons the team decided to depart, along with seeing an exciting opportunity at Stream. 

Sainati also said the team had “tried for months” to resolve the dispute privately before filing the suit.

“That did not work out, unfortunately, and so now we're just prepared to let the facts speak for themselves,” she said.

In addition to the $4M in commission the team says it is owed, the complaint also asks for “compensatory damages for emotional distress and, to the extent permitted by law, punitive damages.”