Christopher Gadrix filed a lawsuit on September 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against CBRE, alleging age discrimination and retaliation after he questioned how his time was billed to clients. The claims and procedural details in this account are allegations from the complaint, as described by Bisnow; CBRE disputes them.
Claims arising from an account-staffing dispute
Gadrix alleges that CBRE assigned him to Baker Hughes in 2019 under an arrangement in which the client reimbursed the company for all of his base salary, bonus compensation and benefits. The complaint says CBRE later gave him work for Avery Dennison and UPS while Baker Hughes continued covering his compensation. Gadrix served as Avery Dennison’s interim real estate director from September through December 2023 and, after CBRE promoted him in August 2025, was assigned to work at UPS’s Atlanta headquarters four days each week, according to the lawsuit as described by Bisnow.
In November 2025, Gadrix raised the arrangement with Executive Vice President Lisa Harber. He alleges that the billing practices could implicate mail or wire fraud, securities-law violations or fraud against shareholders. He later filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which protects certain employees who report suspected securities or shareholder fraud through specified internal or government channels, according to the lawsuit as described by Bisnow.
Termination and age-discrimination allegations
Whistleblower law and restructuring context
The U.S. Supreme Court has distinguished Sarbanes-Oxley’s protection for employees who report suspected misconduct internally or to federal agencies from Dodd-Frank’s separate whistleblower definition, which requires providing securities-law information to the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the court’s 2018 decision in Digital Realty Trust Inc. v. Somers as published by the Legal Information Institute. That distinction does not resolve Gadrix’s claims, which include allegations under Sarbanes-Oxley.
The case also comes amid broader commercial-real-estate workforce pressure. Bisnow has reported cost-cutting and workforce reductions across the industry, including CBRE’s announcement of $300 million in cuts focused on headcount. That industrywide context involves different employers and broader staffing decisions; it does not establish why CBRE ended Gadrix’s position or whether the restructuring explanation applied to him.
About seven weeks after the November discussion, Gadrix met with Harber, Vice Chairman Glenn Dyke and CBRE employee Brittany Barnes, the complaint says. Barnes allegedly told him that his position was being eliminated as part of a restructuring and not because of his performance. CBRE ended his director of transaction management role in February. Gadrix alleges that he was the only person among approximately 50 members of his team whose position was eliminated and that CBRE placed an employee in their 30s into the role.
Gadrix, who is over 40, also alleges that he applied for other CBRE positions but was passed over for substantially younger applicants. He declined to sign a severance agreement, according to the complaint. Separately, he filed an age-discrimination and retaliation charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; the agency issued a right-to-sue notice in June, according to Bisnow’s account of the lawsuit.
Disputed explanations for the separation
The complaint also challenges CBRE’s stated reason for Gadrix’s departure. He alleges that the company told the Georgia Department of Labor that a client had requested his separation, while other explanations included restructuring, elimination of his position, a client’s move to a digital solution, and an assertion that he was dissatisfied and wanted other opportunities. Gadrix further alleges that representatives of UPS, Baker Hughes and Avery Dennison did not ask for his removal.
Gadrix alleges that the differing explanations, along with statements allegedly made to prospective employers, harmed his professional reputation and made it more difficult to obtain comparable work. The legal significance of those competing accounts, including any issue involving Georgia separation-notice requirements, remains disputed and will be addressed in the litigation rather than treated here as an established finding.
CBRE disputes the allegations
CBRE said Gadrix’s claims lack merit and that it will contest them, according to Bisnow. Gadrix declined to provide further comment, saying he wanted to protect the integrity of the case. He is represented by Wimberly Lawson Steckel Schneider & Stine P.C.; the complaint identifies Elizabeth Dorminey and Larry Stine as attorneys involved in the case.
