Lawyers for the 64,000 current and former employees of Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe have announced that their clients have reached a settlement with the four tech titans in an anti-poaching case that accused each company of conspiring to bring wages down by refraining from hiring one another's engineers.
Terms of the settlement are not disclosed, but a document filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco shows both sides have "reached a new settlement agreement," which is still subject for approval by Judge Lucy Koh. The document does not reveal the settlement amount.
Earlier, the judge rejected a proposed settlement of $324.5 million on the basis that other workers who have settled with three other companies involved in the case, namely Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilms, received a payout that is higher than what the 64,000 plaintiffs would receive if the initial proposal was approved.
In a document explaining her decision, Koh said the four companies would have to pay $380 million to reach the amount agreed to by the three animated film companies.
Without a settlement, the case is set to go to trial on a tentative date of April 10. The judge said, with "ample evidence" of antitrust practices, the companies could be ordered to pay up to $9 billion in damages.
Koh's ruling came after Michael Devine, a former Adobe employee and one of the lead plaintiffs, turned down the proposed settlement, arguing that it would provide the plaintiffs $5,000 apiece while providing $8 million in attorney's legal fees. Daniel Girard, Devine's attorney, says Devine accepts the latest proposed settlement, although he declined to say how much his client will receive if the settlement is greenlighted.
The case is closely followed because it reveals the inner workings of some of the most successful technology companies in the world. Key to the plaintiffs' arguments were a series of emails exchanged between top-ranking executives, including Apple founder Steve Jobs and then CEO of Google Eric Schmidt and Google founder Sergey Brin, who agreed to stop hiring talents from within their companies' ranks.
Another document filed in court discloses Google's special agreement hiring policy, in which it names other companies that have agreed to refrain from poaching staff from Google. The May 2013 document has led to more class-action lawsuits against Microsoft, Oracle, and Ask.com, with whom Google agreed to a "restricted hiring" policy.
Plaintiffs accuse the companies of participating in an "overarching conspiracy" to restrict job mobility and bring down wages. However, the companies claim employee salaries from 2005 to 2009, the period when the agreement was in place, increased. In 2010, the companies agreed to end the agreement before the Department of Justice but denied any wrongdoing.
