However, the damages are likely hard to calculate here - since it involves calculating and arguing about prevailing rental rates in a competitive market vs the actual market due to realpage, in a huge number of places. Greystar would have argued about every single finding you made, too.
Because of the novelty and complexity involved, Greystar could have tied this up for a decade arguing about that and appealing any results, i'm sure. On top of that, Greystar would argue all they did is share data with realpage and use realpage's results, so any loss is really attributable to realpage, not to them.
Greystar may also not have tons of money. Most of their deals are debt deals. The company is private, and while revenue is roughly known, profit isn't publicly known (AFAIK). So it's hard to say what fine they could afford. The DOJ knows, of course, just we don't know.
Finally, being a private firm that does what they do, my guess is they would play games and other things with any real fine to avoid having to pay it (bankruptcy, et al).
Overall - getting their cooperation is probably more valuable than arguing about damages for a decade and then watching greystar play games while losing the ability to go meaningfully after RealPage.
Obviously, i'm not trying to state any of this is ethically okay or that folks who were overcharged don't deserve their money back. I'm just trying to give you a dispassionate view of some of the decision making involved and why they may have chosen what they did.
Or at least, what would normally be involved. With the trump administration, who knows.
The better question is how strong of a case the government had. Your question implies Greystar was indisputably guilty and the government's case would be a slam dunk, but that's not readily apparent, given the novel concept of "algorithmic price fixing".
>Like if this were a class action settlement, they would have to pay back some amount of money to renters.
This settlement doesn't preclude class action lawsuits on the part of tenants.
In China these people would be in labor camps for anti-social exploitation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
>In China these people would be in labor camps for anti-social exploitation.
China also sends Uyghurs and other political prisoners for similarly spurious charges.
Obviously, it should not.
You may have been able to make that argument in the past, but since ~January, the US is a country of Rule by Law.