Federal judge nixes $325M settlement by Apple, Google, others in claimed salary-cap conspiracy
A federal judge in San Jose, California, has nixed a proposed $325 million class action settlement over a claimed no-poaching agreement between major Silicon Valley companies that allegedly helped keep a lid on salaries for tech workers.
Although U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh found “ample evidence” that Adobe, Apple, Google and Intel participated in a no-poaching conspiracy that kept employees’ salaries down, she said the proposed $325 million pact fell outside “the range of reasonableness,” Courthouse News reports.
The share each of the 64,000 or so plaintiffs would get is proportionately less than what workers in a similar case against Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar received in 2013, the judge said.
After lawyers who sued the tech giants got their 25 percent, the rejected settlement would have paid each individual plaintiff about $4,000, the New York Times (reg. req.) reports.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Apple, Google settle in claimed conspiracy to put a lid on tech salaries; workers had sought $3B”
