Judge rejects settlement in Silicon Valley no-poaching case
Source: San Jose Mercury News
A proposed settlement of a class-action suit claiming some of Silicon Valley's largest tech companies had conspired against their employees was rejected Friday for being too low.
U.S. District Court Judge Judge Lucy Koh shot down the $324 million amount that Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel agreed to with lawyers for more than 64,000 valley tech workers, who claimed the firms agreed to not poach employees from each others' workforces. The valley employees who sued over the "no poaching" agreements were expected to demand at least $3 billion from a jury if the legal fight had moved to trial, an amount that could have tripled under federal antitrust law.
In Friday's filing, Koh said that plaintiffs would receive less proportionally in this settlement than in a $20 million settlement with LucasFilm, Pixar and Intuit in the same case last year. Koh found the discount for those companies was especially egregious considering the plaintiffs' case had grown stronger since the earlier settlement, with Koh certifying it as a class action and withstanding an appeal of that decision.
... "There is substantial and compelling evidence that Steve Jobs ... was a, if not the, central figure in the alleged conspiracy," Koh later wrote.
Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26301081/biz-break-judge-rejects-settlement-silicon-valley-no
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