Inman Connect Las Vegas is LIVE this week! Get all your real estate questions answered and network with thousands of industry leaders. Join us virtually from anywhere in the world — the future of real estate is unfolding now.
Several days after Move and CoStar Group’s latest filings, former Realtor.com editor James Kaminsky’s counsel filed a new statement outlining Kaminsky’s recollection of events and stating his support of CoStar’s request for expedited discovery.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL INDEX SURVEY FOR JULY
“I have not engaged in any work at CoStar that competes with Move’s News & Insights group, nor have I assisted anyone at CoStar in doing so,” the filing read. “I am currently on administrative leave. I have no access to CoStar’s computer system and am doing no work for CoStar other than assisting with the response to Move’s lawsuit.”
In the 36-page declaration of support, Kaminsky detailed his “surprise” layoff from Move, his attempts to delete “financial, personal and medical information” from Move-owned devices and email accounts before returning them to the company, and the reason for accessing documents Move said included trade secrets. The former editor also explained his decision to work for CoStar Group, saying it was a good opportunity in an “extremely tight” media job market.
“My new job at CoStar is entirely different from my prior job at Move. I readily disclosed my new job and its responsibilities to several people at Move; I was proud of it,” the filing read. “I never imagined that Move would have any issue with it at all and certainly never tried to hide it from Move.”
“Given all of the Move personnel who I met with and described my new role, I am shocked and surprised that Move informed the Court and claimed in the press that I am engaged in an effort to build a news department at CoStar to rival the News & Insights department I ran at Move,” it continued. “It is again simply not true.”
Kaminsky said Move notified him of the layoff on Jan. 10, noting that his last day with the company would be Jan. 12. In those two days, Kaminsky said he began downloading personal information from Move-owned devices, including his 2023 pay stubs, old W-2s and credit card information. He also downloaded recent performance reviews, Christmas gift cards from colleagues, pictures of his new home and medical information for his two children, both of whom have special needs.
After securing his personal information, Kaminsky said he realized he needed to “remember the high points” of his 8.5-year career at Realtor.com, so he added his personal email address to several News & Insights Google documents in anticipation that Move would shutter his work email address.
“There was nothing secretive here: I gave myself access by inviting myself to them with my named email, [redacted]” the filing read. “In my experience at the company, we would not infrequently see names appear on documents that we did not expect to be there – we would just remove them. It was not a very secure system.”
“The fact that I could grant permission to my personal email address [redacted], not a Move.com email address, to access the documents suggested to me that the documents were and are not highly significant proprietary documents,” it added. “Certainly, I did not expect that anyone at Move would be concerned by my access to these documents. The documents did not, in my view, contain highly sensitive materials.”
Kaminsky said the files at the center of Move’s theft of trade secrets claim included sheets he created outlining his team’s salary and bonuses, an ongoing list of Realtor.com News & Insights stories, a “2022 or 2023” presentation on audience and revenue projections, and two other files with passwords to third-party subscriptions, WordPress instructions, and staff contact numbers.
Kaminsky said he “briefly viewed” the document with salary information to help him calculate an appropriate asking salary during his job search and clicked the document with audience and revenue projections, not knowing what it contained. However, after looking, he said it contained an audience presentation that “[jogged] his memory” about previous work accomplishments. He said he accessed both of those files before starting his position with CoStar on March 11.
The next time he accessed a Move-owned file was on May 31, when he needed help calculating the correct tax withholding for his CoStar paychecks. During the search for old paystubs in the emails he’d forwarded himself from his Move email account, he came across emails notifying him of the Move-owned documents to which he added his personal address and opened them.
“I recall being surprised that I still had access to the documents and that the links were still active,” the filing read. “I clicked through the documents to see what they were and to satisfy some basic curiosity. None of the documents were relevant to my work at CoStar.”
Kaminsky said he rapidly clicked through some of the documents, noting that a few were hundreds of pages long. Although he accessed those documents, Kaminsky said he never used them for his work at CoStar or shared them with CoStar colleagues or leadership, as his job with CoStar focuses on managing a team that writes listing descriptions for high-end condominium and co-op buildings in NYC.
“My job at Move was to manage a department in which we identified, wrote, and published news articles designed to draw traffic to the Realtor.com website regarding a wide range of economic and business issues relating to residential real estate and more pop culture articles about celebrities and their homes,” the filing read. “The writings are connected on the website to listings relating to those buildings; it is not a stand-alone feature designed to drive traffic to the website.”
“To my knowledge, CoStar does not track traffic at this time to this portion of Homes.com,” it continued. “I have never seen any statistics about audience traffic, and I have never been asked to focus on growing Internet traffic.”
Kaminsky said he accessed one final document on June 9, the day Move said it became aware of Kaminsky’s actions. That document, he said, was titled, “News & Insights content decks.” The link, and several others, was dead, he said.
“To be clear, I no longer have access to any of the four documents that, in its Motion for Preliminary Injunction, Move alleges contain trade secret information. I did not print the documents, save them externally or otherwise preserve them in my records,” the filing read. “I have never shared the records with anyone at CoStar, or used them in any capacity in the course of my work for CoStar or in any way in competition with Move.”
“To establish that I have no access to any of the documents Move alleges contain trade secrets, I have already provided my work and personal computers and electronic devices to a forensic examiner who I understand CoStar and my counsel retained for the purpose of establishing the facts relating to the Complaint and the Motion for Preliminary Injunction and supporting our defense against the baseless claims Move has asserted against CoStar and me,” it added.
CoStar has put Kaminsky on administrative leave as the Virginia-based company battles Move over its July 23 ex-parte request (i.e., the expedition of an order without giving the other party time to oppose) for an Order of Protection preventing the disclosure of confidential and trade secret information during the discovery process. Especially sensitive documents, Move said, should only be available to Move’s counsel and CoStar Group’s outside counsel.
CoStar answered back by requesting expedited discovery and the rescheduling of the preliminary injunction hearing from Aug. 15 to Sept. 19. In its filing, CoStar’s counsel said the expedited discovery would allow both parties to access unredacted versions of previous filings and accompanying exhibits so each side can submit a “more fulsome briefing” ahead of the preliminary injunction hearing.
CoStar leadership, including General Counsel Gene Boxer, has framed Move’s lawsuit as a “PR stunt” in the midst of an intensifying battle over website traffic performance. Meanwhile, Realtor.com has been reserved in its commentary over the suit, with a spokesperson saying the company doesn’t file lawsuits “frivolously” and will “litigate in the courts, not the media.”
A judge reviewed Move and CoStar’s ex-parte requests on Monday. A ruling is expected soon.
Read Kaminsky’s statement below:
