A former Brown Harris Stevens agent is suing the firm over its clawback policies.
Scott Harris, who earlier this year left the brokerage to launch his own shop, filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging it failed to pay him roughly $300,000 in commissions for deals that closed after his departure.
In the complaint, filed in New York last month, Harris claims BHS sought to “punish” him for leaving by demanding Harris pay them money for perks he received during his employment, pursuant to the firm’s clawback policies.
“I have nothing against them,” Harris wrote in an emailed statement. “I had a great relationship with the firm up until the point at which I left.”
But following his exit, which Harris described as an “intentional decision to grow and expand” by having his own business, his relationship with the firm began to break down.
“I’ve experienced theft and retaliation,” he wrote in the statement. “I don’t like being bullied and robbed.”
BHS said the firm “disputes this unfounded and ridiculous claim vehemently.”
After nearly two decades with BHS, Harris exited in January, bringing along his eight-person team to start a new operation called Magnetic backed by the white-label firm, Side.
Under Harris’ independent contractor agreement with BHS, he was owed 40 percent of commissions earned from pending deals closed after his departure, according to the complaint. Harris, through his attorney, Adam Leitman Bailey, claimed he had 12 sales under contract when he left, which should have yielded more than $700,000 in gross commissions, $293,000 of which should have been paid to him.
However, shortly after he submitted the paperwork to collect, Harris alleges BHS sent him a “clawback letter” claiming he owed the firm more than $430,000 for “commission splits and expense funds paid in excess of BHS’s standard policies during the three years before Harris left.”
The letter stated that the firm would not pay Harris the outstanding commissions considering the amount of money he owed the firm, which he alleges is “vastly inflated.” Included in their calculation was a $38,000 bonus paid to Harris for his performance in 2024.
However, the complaint argues that Harris was actually owed a $75,000 bonus, the full amount of which BHS never paid him, and that it failed to deliver on several of its other promises, including giving him and his team a private office in the firm’s Upper West Side location.
The complaint alleges BHS “took several other actions calculated to sabotage Harris,” including “maliciously” downplaying his sales volume to RealTrends by reporting he’d only closed $104 million worth of deals in 2024 instead of $138 million.
Harris also claims the firm didn’t shut down or set up an autoreply to his former BHS account, which he argues is still receiving emails from “clients, colleagues, and other important contacts” and causing him to “miss potential sales and damage [his] reputation.”
The lawsuit seeks at least $8 million in damages as well as a declaratory judgment clearing him from any outstanding balance with BHS.
Harris’ complaint comes after another former BHS agent, Chris Poore, sued the brokerage for failing to pay him commissions on a $4.9 million deal after he left the firm. Like Harris, Poore claimed the brokerage sent him a demand to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars under its clawback policies.
A judge sided with Poore and awarded him summary judgment on two of the claims, though the litigation is still pending.
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