A prominent Keller Williams franchisee and the CEO of multiple Texas-based Keller Williams offices has dropped her sexual misconduct lawsuit against Keller Williams, Gary Keller and others.
Inga Dow, the CEO of Keller Williams Realty Fort Worth and Keller Williams Realty Johnson County in Texas, filed a notice on Monday in the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Fort Worth dismissing all her claims against all defendants in the suit except former Keller Williams CEO John Davis.
Davis still faces claims of tortious interference and breach of fiduciary duty.
In her amended complaint filed in late March 2022, Dow alleged that she had endured years of sexual misconduct, harassment and abuse at Davis’s hands and that Keller Williams did nothing to address the behaviors and punished her for reporting it.
Additionally, the complaint alleged an overall culture at Keller Williams that encouraged female employees “to do whatever it took to make sales and ‘get along’ with top performers to keep them happy,” including performing “sexual favors or acts for male counterparts and/or top clients.”
In the complaint, Dow also claimed that Davis demanded sex from her on multiple occasions and that she felt “she had no choice but to acquiesce, because Davis was backed and supported by Keller, CEO and Founder of KWRI, which gave Davis a high degree of power within KWRI.” When Dow resisted Davis’ alleged advances, she claims that he retaliated by delaying her application to open a market center in Johnson County.
The complaint named fellow market center owner David Osborn, KW regional director Smokey Garrett, and Go Management, the company that runs KW’s Fort Worth regional office, as additional defendants.
The lawsuit contained 11-counts against Keller Williams and Go Management. In September 2022, the court ordered all of Dow’s claims, except those against Davis, into arbitration.
On Tuesday, Davis filed a motion to re-open the case, which was stayed last year due to the arbitration. Due to the stay, Davis’ motions to dismiss the suit and strike “all immaterial, impertinent and scandalous matter from the Original Complaint and First Amended Complaint,” which were filed in early April 2022, have yet to be ruled upon.
“We intend to and are eager to move forward with our case,” Paul Omodt, a spokesperson for Davis, wrote in an email. “Our claims and counterclaims are still pending and we will see them through. The truth matters — and we will eager to share the truth with the court. “
In the fall of 2022, Davis filed his own lawsuit against Keller Williams, Keller and Josh Team, prompted by his desire to “restore his reputation and clear his good name” in light to Dow’s sexual misconduct allegations.
According to the initial complaint, Davis resigned from his position at Keller Williams in January 2019 due to a disagreement with Keller over a business strategy that he felt would hurt the income generated by Keller Williams offices.
In response to his resignation, Davis alleged that Keller and Team smeared him and withheld Inga Dow’s accusations of sexual misconduct from him as he was negotiating the sale of his KW market center regions following his resignation. This resulted in tens of millions in financial losses, according to Davis.
In March, Colleen and Bart Basinski, former Keller Williams Market Center owners in Illinois and Indiana, and partial owners of a third Market Center in Southern California, filed their own lawsuit against KW, Keller and other top brokerage executives, alleging that they faced constant pressure from Keller executives and regional directors to alter their business operations, despite parameters set up in their franchise agreement, and adhere to Keller’s plans to lower Market Center caps in 2020.
In late August 2023, Davis filed a racketeering lawsuit against Keller Williams and Keller, alleging that the defendants inflated key profitability metrics including company sales and profits to convince individuals to purchase Keller Williams Regions and Market Centers.
Keller Williams declined to comment on the dismissal of Dow’s suit.
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