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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-15/apple-google-agree-to-415-million-in-antitrust-hiring-deal-1-.html Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOGL) agreed to a $415 million settlement, $90.5 million more than a previously rejected accord, to end an embarrassing chapter of litigation showing how they and other Silicon Valley companies conspired to avoid hiring one another’s employees. The agreement, first disclosed Jan. 13 with no details on terms and filed today in full, requires the approval of U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, California, who in August rejected the initial $324.5 million accord on grounds it didn’t offer enough money for affected workers. Koh said the companies, which include Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) and Intel Corp. (INTC), should pay at least $380 million given “ample evidence” of antitrust violations that might result in damages of more than $9 billion if the case went to a jury. For the companies, approval of the new accord would avoid the risk of a trial scheduled for April and finish off a 2011 lawsuit that produced troves of internal e-mails detailing anticompetitive agreements among the chief executive officers at technology giants. The four months it took to hammer out the new agreement suggests “serious sustained negotiation” between the two sides, Orly Lobel, a law professor at University of San Diego who specializes in labor and employment issues, said in an e-mail. “My prediction is she will approve the settlement,” Lobel said, referring to Koh. “It is not a bad result even if it is still fairly low relative to the potential high win when a trial proceeds. But that’s typical for settlements.” Adobe Employee One of the objections to the original settlement was filed by former Adobe employee Michael Devine, who left the company in 2008 and was a lead plaintiff in the case. Devine’s lawyer, Daniel Girard, argued that if workers’ lawyers hadn’t initially agreed to settle for an average payout of about $3,572, they could have won damages at trial of as much as $141,331 each. Daniel Girard, a lawyer representing Devine, said the new settlement comes out to about $6,400 for each employee. Girard said that when a San Francisco-based appeals court agreed in September to consider the companies’ request to overrule Koh’s rejection of the initial settlement, it presented a “meaningful risk.” That factored into Devine’s decision to support the $415 million agreement, Girard said. Devine “has signed on to the settlement but he believes everyone should make their own assessment,” Girard said. “We believe this is the maximum number that can be obtained at this point in the litigation.” Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, and Aaron Stein, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Google, declined to comment on the new settlement agreement. Rejections of antitrust settlements are rare, especially when objections are based on the amount and not the law. The rejected settlement would have given the employees’ lawyers $81 million in fees plus $1.2 million in costs. Intuit Inc., Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s Pixar animation studio and visual-effects specialist Lucasfilm Ltd. previously settled with the workers for $20 million. The case is In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, 11-cv-02509, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose). To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg, David Glovin
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Jan 16, 2015 15:29
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[crowd starts chanting 'NO DEAL' ]
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Jan 16, 2015 15:30
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pretty shameful that this story has largely been flying under the radar. only the microsoft nerds can smugly point out this story but there aren't any of them left. all other nerds see their idols with dirty hands and would rather pretend like this doesn't exist
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Jan 16, 2015 15:40
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do no evil :iamafag:
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Jan 16, 2015 15:46
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lampey posted:I dont understand, this settlement, they are paying out 1/10th of the "damages"? Why would they accept a settlement that is not meaningfully changing their lives when they are making 6 figures and could potentially get a huge payout?  koh hasn't accepted it yetdefense is simply making a second attempt at settling and this is what they agreed on. prosecution can tell them to go-fish again. hence my post: Necc0 posted:[crowd starts chanting 'NO DEAL' ]
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Jan 17, 2015 17:33
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