10 ms·

Technology Giants Settle Hiring Suit

77 points by nicholas73 13y ago

joshavant 13y ago
Could anyone explain how the terms of this are able to go undisclosed when this is a class action suit, and the plaintiffs are the public at large?
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  How did you form the belief that the public at large are the plaintiff class? I believe it's comprised of people who actually worked for the named companies between specific dates.
  - gopher1 13y ago
    Although I believe he meant "public" as in, people who were affected but not directly filing the lawsuits. So, as you say, people who worked for or were affiliated with the affected companies. However, you can make the argument that this affected the entire North American tech labor market, in which case it truly would be the tech public at large. Perhaps that's why they're so keen to settle.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    ...AND signed with the lawyers to be represented. the judge just have to agree that a significant number of people affect joined to allow a class action. even if in reality it leaves almost everyone out.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    The effects of a conspiracy to prevent poaching, effectively reducing the market for labor, will have knock-on effects. It affects wage levels at other firms, both within the technical community and in the affected regions at large. Given that the anti-poaching restrictions were international in scope (one instance involved former Apple employees being considered by Google, in France), this isn't a strictly Silicon Valley affair either. So, yes, the affected markets were very large. I am disappoint.
- salgernon 13y ago
  The results will be presented to the court on May 27th; I imagine they'll be kept quiet until then. http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25630192/apple-google-adobe-and-intuit-settle-silicon-valley http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25630192/apple-go...
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    No, it will be mailed to class members, and leak that way. They can't keep quiet the terms of a proposed settlement from the 64k engineers they claim to represent :)
    - SilasX 13y ago
      64k engineers ought to be enough for anyone (to reconstruct the initial settlement value).
    - salgernon 13y ago
      I would think the judge need to approve the settlement before the claims are mailed.
      - DannyBee 13y ago
        What is currently private are the proposed terms of the settlement. Those get mailed to every member prior to any judge approving or denying them, because the class members can object independently of the lead plaintiffs
      - dspeyer 13y ago
        Other way around. One of the options engineers receiving the mailing have is to go to the hearing and present their opinions on the settlement to the judge. Most won't, but with 64k plaintiffs, most of them long-winded, it'll still need to be a patient judge.
- JonFish85 13y ago
  Regardless of what it'll say in print, 75% of any money will go to lawyers, and the rest will be doled out accordingly. Affected workers will have to get in line with appropriate documentation for their $75 pre-paid Visa card, to be mailed to them and delivered within 8-12 weeks.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    A judge would never approve such a high contingency fee. Standard contingency fee is about 35%.
    - avn2109 13y ago
      Yet the parent's point stands quite as firmly at 35% as it did at 75%. Intuitively it doesn't seem just for systemic friction to enrich undamaged parties so thoroughly.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
    Although it's nowhere close to 75%, probably more like 33%, I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. Let's say the total settlement is for, say, $3 billion. The lawyers get $1 billion. That is a _lot_ of money for the work performed. More importantly it's money that the alleged victims are not getting. You could argue that the victims wouldn't get anything except for the great public good performed by these valiant legal heroes.
- rayiner 13y ago
  The plaintiffs are not the public at large. They are the class of people, 60,000 in number in this case, who were affected by these hiring practices. The terms of the settlement will be mailed to class members who are not directly involved in the suit, and they will be given the option to opt-out and preserve any individual claims they have against the parties.
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    Thanks, this is helpful. Does that mean the federal government is not a party to this suit? I'm pretty sure that other anti-trust cases are pursued by the federal government. If so, do you know whether it's still possible for the terms of settlement arising from such suits to be sealed?
    - vqc 13y ago
      The federal government is not a party to this suit, at least not based on the complaint that I saw.
    - dctoedt 13y ago
      > Does that mean the federal government is not a party to this suit? Back in 2010 the U.S. Department of Justice entered into a settlement of the government's claims against Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar. The proposed agreed final judgment, which I believe was approved by the court substantially as-is, is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/38096460/Settlement-in-tech-hiring-case http://www.scribd.com/doc/38096460/Settlement-in-tech-hiring.... The settlement imposed some restrictions on the companies' hiring practices, but those restrictions included significant carve-outs, some of which I discussed at http://www.oncontracts.com/dojs-employee-solicitation-consent-decree-for-silicon-valley-companies-the-exceptions-are-the-most-interesting-part/ http://www.oncontracts.com/dojs-employee-solicitation-consen....
    - rayiner 13y ago
      The antitrust laws have criminal and civil components as well as governmental and private aspects. The government may prosecute violators of the antitrust laws and impose criminal or civil punishments. These are punitive. Private plaintiffs may then sue for monetary injuries they personally suffered. The fact that it takes the form of a class action just means a bunch of private claims are considered as a class. It does not change the fact that they are private claims. This particular case was pursued by the government. The companies settled with the DOJ: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f272300/272393.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f272300/272393.htm. See: http://www.mintz.com/newsletter/2011/Advisories/0858-0111-NAT-AFR/web.htm http://www.mintz.com/newsletter/2011/Advisories/0858-0111-NA.... The DOJ has a policy against entering into confidential settlement agreements: http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/50.23 http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/50.23. While it is in theory legal for them to do so, this regulation makes any such attempt potentially subject to litigation.
fsk 13y ago
Suppose the settlement was $6B and 60k members are in the class. That's $100k per worker. However, the lawyers usually get 1/3, so $2B for the lawyers and $67k per worker. That's the offensive part about class action lawsuits like this. The lawyers MAKE A FORTUNE. The class victims get a decent check, but nothing great, and probably less than they lost due to the crime.
- harryh 13y ago
  The lawyers also do all the work and take on all the risk.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Upvoted, because as much as I hate your answer, you're right.
  - Stratoscope 13y ago
    > The lawyers also do all the work and take on all the risk. Except for being the ones who were actually harmed in the matter. Edit: Despite my snarky reply, I'm with toomuchtodo - I upvoted your post even if I felt annoyed by it at first, because you make a very good and valid point and it gave me food for thought. Why was I annoyed by your post, then? Probably my Borland check. It must have been about 20 years ago, but there was some class action suit on Borland stock. I was in the class and from the numbers they sent out, it looked like I might actually get some real money out of it, at least a thousand bucks or so. Then my check came. $17. I pored through the documents to see what had gone wrong, and I found it: there was a limited settlement fund, I think around $12 million, only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions that the original class action notification had talked about. Out of the $12 million settlement fund, the lawyers got $7.5 million. I'm going to quit software development and get into that business.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
rwmj 13y ago
How come no one goes to prison? (Genuine question: does US monopoly law not allow that outcome?)
- sethhochberg 13y ago
  A lawsuit case like this is a civil matter - judgements / settlements are made based on some violation of a legal agreement between two parties. Violation of that legal agreement may or may not be a criminal issue. For someone to go to prison, a criminal case would be needed, requiring criminal acts - not just violations of a legal agreement - and government prosecutor willing to bring charges against the parties allegedly responsible. It seems there were (probably) criminal acts here, but as of yet we've not seen a prosecutor go after the case. These kind of things can be further complicated in the US because of the different standards of proof required for each case type. In a criminal case, the state must be able to prove "beyond any doubt" that the defendant is indeed guilty. Civil cases have a much less ironclad standard for guilt/responsibility, and can often be easier to "win" as a result. Its certainly possible that government prosecutors are aware of the issue, and aware of the civil settlement, but don't believe they could prepare a compelling enough case based on the evidence available to win a criminal trial against undoubtedly well-legally-represented executives.
  - bagels 13y ago
    The emails seem like fairly good evidence for criminal misconduct, but I am not a court nor a lawyer.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      Errr, what criminal law do you believe it violates?
      - mullingitover 13y ago
        Obstruction of justice? The emails explicitly state that the planning should be taken offline, presumably to thwart any future investigation.
bsder 13y ago
And $6 billion split between all the companies involved is a rounding error. Make the fine $6 trillion and now you're talking something that will likely deter this behavior. $100K per worker is irrelevant compared to the amount of money the companies gained by holding down salaries even 5% after compounding. It's not like everybody's salary jumps up the lost amount after this.
- soup10 13y ago
  I disagree, 6B is a large number. Settlements of that size are probably pretty rare. I think the tech companies caved quickly because of the round after round of bad press they were getting(which was doing a number to their "we care about our employees" propaganda). Should be interesting to see how it's distributed.
- tptacek 13y ago
  By putting the companies out of business, and all their employees out of work?
  - briantakita 13y ago
    From the ashes of immoral companies, better ones will prosper.
  - bsder 13y ago
    So, illegal behavior is fine as long as it provides jobs? You might want to think about your statement a little harder. Yes, the penalty should be high enough that the company goes bankrupt if they lose 2 or 3 of these kinds of cases.
- harryh 13y ago
  According to the NYTimes link, the actual plaintiffs in this lawsuit claimed that employees had lost out on ~3B in wages due to the fixing. Why do you think they're wrong in this claim?
  - bsder 13y ago
jonathankoren 13y ago
This is just absurd. I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case. There are multiple emails that proposing the conspiracy, executing the conspiracy, expanding the conspiracy, and warnings to the ringleaders of the conspiracy (i.e. Jobs, Schmidt, Whittman, Lucas, etc.) being told explicitly what they were doing was illegal, and then actively taking actions to cover it up. (Specifically I refer to Eric Schmidt's email in which he said regarding the Apple-Google agreement, "I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later".) The only way you can prevent this, and other kinds of organized and large scale fraud is through confiscation of revenue on a massive scale. To make the companies hurt and to directly effect the officers of the companies. Otherwise, these settlements are simply noise, and a chalked up as a cost of doing business. Here's some numbers to keep in mind, when the settlement is announced. Google $16.86 BILLION in revenue Q4-2013 Apple $37.5 BILLION ($7B profit) Q4-2013 eBay $4.5 BILLION Q4-2013 Unless the settlement is in the tens-of-billions of dollars, it's nothing. (Bonus points, if they settle, "while admitting no guilt.")
- whoismua 13y ago
  I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case. Lawyers? Maybe they did the math and realized they could pocket $XXX million to $1 Billion if they settled. On the other hand, engineers might get a $10 Adwords coupon or a free song on iTunes.
  - anxman 13y ago
    The attorneys are probably making a simple calculation: a) Take a $1b settlement today, yielding $500m for attorneys. b) Take a chance on a $5b judgement that is then challenged with years of appeals and possibly reduced arbitrarily by a defendant-friendly judge down the road. The law firm probably is just happy to get the money.
    - whoismua 13y ago
      Bingo, that was my reasoning too. Bird in hand and all. Probably that's enough money to make every lawyer in their firm a millionaire (not that it's divided evenly) so why take the chance?
sneak 13y ago
This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. How hard would it have been to say "anything Google offers you, we'll double it, so don't fucking leave? We're busy changing the world here, and that would be a pointless setback." It's not like Apple is exactly cash-strapped, and it's not like he didn't know the value of his teams ("means war" clearly speaks to that).
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- briantakita 13y ago
  > This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. Jobs was a player. Look at how he played Wozniak, the mother of his daughter, & his daughter. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-movie/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-mov...
- lutusp 13y ago
  > This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. I tried to work with Jobs in the late 70s and early 80s, and I couldn't stand him. After a brief spell I refused to work with Apple any more. Since then I've been waiting for the world to catch up with my already low opinion. :) Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book.
  - sneak 13y ago
    > Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book. Despite never having met or worked with the guy, I gotta side with Gruber's take on this one: Isaacson totally missed the boat. He was granted unprecedented (and now, unfortunately, impossible) access to a fiercely interesting person's life, and either his lack of contextual understanding or lack of domain knowledge led to a book that is, at best, underwhelming. His questions, his analysis, it all seemed so pedestrian and boring. Maybe the lack of hard questions or deep insights is why Jobs chose him in particular to be granted such access, but I personally expected a whole fuck of a lot more from something that had so much promise to begin with. I feel like Mossberg or maybe even someone who doesn't write as their profession (Ive? Kottke? Kawasaki?) might have done a vastly better job. Maybe I just wish I'd had a chance to know the guy, deeply flawed character and all, and no text will ultimately be sufficient - but Isaacson's effort left me with so many more basic questions than it even began to attempt to ask, much less answer. And now, all that potential wisdom to be gleaned from this specific instance falls into the realm of the unlearnable. Perhaps that was the plan. Who are we to assume his legacy was any less meticulously crafted than anything else he unleashed upon the world?
abalone 13y ago
I'm somewhere between the sentiments expressed here. I'm thankful there's a strong incentive for top-notch law firms to pursue cases like this. I doubt this would have happened otherwise. My concern is that a ~35% cut may motivate the firms to settle for much less than would be meaningful for the victims. The firm would gross a billion dollars on a $3B settlement, while the victims would get an average of $30K. And considering how expensive a trial is, I can see them settling for much less. I don't know much about this field, but I wonder if it would make more sense for the court to take vote among the class members rather than letting the firm decide themselves. Or is it just up to the judge to decide if it's fair and in the best interests of the class?
- judk 13y ago
  The settlement was $324million for (64,000 class members and the attorney fees).
  - abalone 13y ago
    So the figure leaked. Wow, that ain't sh*t.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  It's a form of the principle-agent problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem Freakonomics identified a similar bias in real estate: realtors (earning a percentage of sales) work less hard for clients' home sales than they do their own, where the additional price received is worth more time.
- geebee 13y ago
  Would it make more sense to have a government agency handle the litigation for class action lawsuits? I'm thinking of something like anti-trust lawsuits, which I believe can be initiated by both state attorneys and private law firms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Remedies_and_enforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Rem... I'm not necessarily advocating for this, because I suspect there are a lot of implications I haven't thought through... however, I'm leaning toward it as an idea. The big problem I see here is that the real victory for a law firm in a very compelling class action is mainly in gaining the right to represent the class. At this point, the risks become asymmetrical, because the payout for the lawyers on a settlement is so high that it makes no sense to engage in even mildly risky behavior, even if the expected return is far higher with litigation. If you and 10 other lawyers are going to get to split 300 million, would you press for litigation that had an 80% chance of returning a billion, and a 20% chance of returning nothing? That lottery would probably be the basis for extracting a good settlement, but it makes sense that lawyers would be extremely reluctant to take that risk, because the outcomes for them are tons of money for sure and probably tons of money but maybe no money. The order of magnitude gets lost in the gain, so only the risk remains as a consideration. Would state prosecutors, who stand to build a career on this but will be paid "the same" regardless of the outcome, do a far worse job?
briantakita 13y ago
The moral of the story... If you have a business, it is almost always to your advantage to break the law in pursuit of profit. Even lawsuits, rare as they are, are cheaper than following the law.
- whoismua 13y ago
  True, this will only change when Mr CEO or HR person gets jail time.
  - briantakita 13y ago
    Since the companies are considered people, they should also get jail time. That should motivate shareholders to insist on scrupulous behavior.
    - politician 13y ago
      Corporate jail time (i.e. barring a company from operating in the marketplace) is equivalent to a death sentence for most companies. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear some ideas about what else "jail time" for a corporation might mean.
      - aniro 13y ago
        The core of the Citizens United decision was that becoming a member of a group (ie: Corporation) did not abrogate individual rights. The implication is that groups of people have the exact same rights as individuals. I think there needs to be a corollary in terms of responsibility. Of course, the entire raison d'etre of modern corporations is to indemnify the members against responsibility for the actions of the group.
      - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        >Corporate jail time (i.e. barring a company from operating in the marketplace) is equivalent to a death sentence for most companies. It's an economic death sentence for most individuals, too.
guimarin 13y ago
Reuters is reporting the settlement to be about $324million. So an order of magnitude less than speculated here. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-lawsuit-exclusive-idUSBREA3N28Z20140424 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-la... And just in case anyone is wondering that works out to: $3375 per employee effected.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  And more importantly it works to: $totally worth it for the companies involved. 324/4 = $81 million each (assuming they split it evenly, I have no idea how that division works). While each employee represented in this suit got the shaft, the bigger problem (IMO) is that the punitive cost for the individual companies is small enough (relative to their sizes and how much they likely saved by engaging in this practice) that it alone is unlikely to change any future behavior.
rhizome 13y ago
The fix is in. The class is represented by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, which has a long history of getting low settlements in big cases. They are a false-flag shill firm working for the benefit of themselves and the defendant companies. Like scofflaws Archer Daniels Midland, they are long-time sponsors of NPR, so don't expect any hard-hitting reporting from the mainstream-left in the US.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Citation required.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    It's simple math. Here's a case of theirs that was way under-settled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Uninsured_Patient_Hospital_Pricing_Litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Uninsured_Patient_Ho... A whopping $3K-tops/year per class member: http://www.lieffcabraser.com/Case-Center/Comdata.shtml http://www.lieffcabraser.com/Case-Center/Comdata.shtml
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      That's 1) a single datapoint and 2) doesn't show how LCHB compares with other law firms in class-action cases. I'm not doubting, or believing, your assertion. I'm requesting something more material than mere assertion. I actually tend to share your skepticism of significant NPR sponsors -- too many companies in need of whitewashing / greenwashing seem to end up in that role, to the point it's tainted the brand. Now I think "Oh, I wonder what that company is trying to atone for" when I hear a credit (if I don't already know, e.g., Walmart, Microsoft, Monsanto, Comcast, etc.).
      - rhizome 13y ago
        Frankly I couldn't care less about how other law firms do in class-actions. In this issue we have LCHB and the settlement as leaked/rumored totally stinks for the kind of activites, admitted intentions, we have here. So it doesn't matter how LCHB compares to others, what matters is that they aren't doing a good enough job here. I mean, come on, isn't it suspicious how quickly all of this was worked out?
Bahamut 13y ago
Can anyone answer this question - for what appears to be a rockstar case, is there any reason why someone would opt for a class action suit and not sue on their own?
jjwiseman 13y ago
I like to imagine the cognitive dissonance this is causing in Google employees ("Google is good" / "Those emails are damning evidence of a conspiracy to break the law") leading to explosive outbursts and aggressive responses on eng-misc.
- oh_sigh 13y ago
  eng-misc is the area for the most cynical of employees. you really don't know anything if you expect them to be experiencing cognitive dissonance as you stated.
tfthrowaway 13y ago
I worked for one of these firms during the time period mentioned (as I suspect many other readers here did). Does that automatically make me one of the class members? How do I find out more?
- lacker 13y ago
  If you are one of the class members you should have received mail. They might not have the right address. You could try contacting the law firm.
- xorgar831 13y ago
  https://www.hightechemployeelawsuit.com/ https://www.hightechemployeelawsuit.com/ Though I think the deadline has passed... you had to register to be part of it. Update: oh, I take that back, you have until 4/26/2014 it says.
defen 13y ago
So I ask this only half-jokingly - at this point, what self-respecting engineer would continue to work at Google, Apple, or these other firms? I mean, these guys conspired to illegally suppress your wages, but you're essentially a bunch of suckers who get paid off with a comfortable living, "interesting work," and a bonus check for a couple thousand dollars and you're happy. Meanwhile the people behind this are making literally billions of dollars of profit.
- cloudwalking 13y ago
  I think you answer your own question :) Comfortable living, interesting work, and big bonus checks (tens of thousands for many, hundreds of thousands for some) are indeed what attract a lot of employees. Larry, Sergey, and Eric are universally loved inside of Google, I don't think people mind that they are billionaires. It's not like they're taking $500MM a year in salary.
  - defen 13y ago
    Thank you for making my point for me. BTW the bonus checks I was referring to were the settlement payouts, not normal annual bonuses.
  - AxeFights 13y ago
    Nope, just a mere 83 thousand shares of stock per year. It's quite modest. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=GOOG+Insider+Transactions http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=GOOG+Insider+Transactions
- fixermark 13y ago
  Salaried employment is made of suckers who can be compensated with less than they might be worth because the alternative is a world where they would have to fight for every scrip, scrap, and slice that they are owed. I've been on both sides of that coin---I've worked for the startups and I've worked for "the industry." Am I being "taken advantage of?" Am I being paid less than I'm worth? Probably. But I wouldn't trade the comfortable life of knowing my paycheck won't bounce for the hardscrabble life of the startup cowboy any day of the week. I'm curious what your recommendation is. Is there a third option? Are you recommending people not work for the firms specifically involved in the settlement? I guess I could always look into IBM...
skkbits 13y ago
Honest question: Who gets the settlement ? Anyone who worked for defendants between certain years ? How do they determine 60K employees ? What if someone has left the industry altogether or in an unfortunate case, is no more ? Can someone shed light on this area ?
dredmorbius 13y ago
Pity. I'd have liked to see the disclosures forced by going to trial, as well as a far more substantial penalty. Is there any indication if earlier DoJ action prevents a future investigation and penalty for this?
abalone 13y ago
New report with the $amount ($324M): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7645182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7645182

77 points by nicholas73 13y ago

Could anyone explain how the terms of this are able to go undisclosed when this is a class action suit, and the plaintiffs are the public at large?

thrownaway2424 13y ago
How did you form the belief that the public at large are the plaintiff class? I believe it's comprised of people who actually worked for the named companies between specific dates.
- gopher1 13y ago
  Although I believe he meant "public" as in, people who were affected but not directly filing the lawsuits. So, as you say, people who worked for or were affiliated with the affected companies. However, you can make the argument that this affected the entire North American tech labor market, in which case it truly would be the tech public at large. Perhaps that's why they're so keen to settle.
- gcb0 13y ago
  ...AND signed with the lawyers to be represented. the judge just have to agree that a significant number of people affect joined to allow a class action. even if in reality it leaves almost everyone out.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  The effects of a conspiracy to prevent poaching, effectively reducing the market for labor, will have knock-on effects. It affects wage levels at other firms, both within the technical community and in the affected regions at large. Given that the anti-poaching restrictions were international in scope (one instance involved former Apple employees being considered by Google, in France), this isn't a strictly Silicon Valley affair either. So, yes, the affected markets were very large. I am disappoint.
salgernon 13y ago
The results will be presented to the court on May 27th; I imagine they'll be kept quiet until then. http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25630192/apple-google-adobe-and-intuit-settle-silicon-valley http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25630192/apple-go...
- DannyBee 13y ago
  No, it will be mailed to class members, and leak that way. They can't keep quiet the terms of a proposed settlement from the 64k engineers they claim to represent :)
  - SilasX 13y ago
    64k engineers ought to be enough for anyone (to reconstruct the initial settlement value).
  - salgernon 13y ago
    I would think the judge need to approve the settlement before the claims are mailed.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      What is currently private are the proposed terms of the settlement. Those get mailed to every member prior to any judge approving or denying them, because the class members can object independently of the lead plaintiffs
    - dspeyer 13y ago
      Other way around. One of the options engineers receiving the mailing have is to go to the hearing and present their opinions on the settlement to the judge. Most won't, but with 64k plaintiffs, most of them long-winded, it'll still need to be a patient judge.
JonFish85 13y ago
Regardless of what it'll say in print, 75% of any money will go to lawyers, and the rest will be doled out accordingly. Affected workers will have to get in line with appropriate documentation for their $75 pre-paid Visa card, to be mailed to them and delivered within 8-12 weeks.
- rayiner 13y ago
  A judge would never approve such a high contingency fee. Standard contingency fee is about 35%.
  - avn2109 13y ago
    Yet the parent's point stands quite as firmly at 35% as it did at 75%. Intuitively it doesn't seem just for systemic friction to enrich undamaged parties so thoroughly.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  Although it's nowhere close to 75%, probably more like 33%, I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. Let's say the total settlement is for, say, $3 billion. The lawyers get $1 billion. That is a _lot_ of money for the work performed. More importantly it's money that the alleged victims are not getting. You could argue that the victims wouldn't get anything except for the great public good performed by these valiant legal heroes.
rayiner 13y ago
The plaintiffs are not the public at large. They are the class of people, 60,000 in number in this case, who were affected by these hiring practices. The terms of the settlement will be mailed to class members who are not directly involved in the suit, and they will be given the option to opt-out and preserve any individual claims they have against the parties.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  Thanks, this is helpful. Does that mean the federal government is not a party to this suit? I'm pretty sure that other anti-trust cases are pursued by the federal government. If so, do you know whether it's still possible for the terms of settlement arising from such suits to be sealed?
  - vqc 13y ago
    The federal government is not a party to this suit, at least not based on the complaint that I saw.
  - dctoedt 13y ago
    > Does that mean the federal government is not a party to this suit? Back in 2010 the U.S. Department of Justice entered into a settlement of the government's claims against Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar. The proposed agreed final judgment, which I believe was approved by the court substantially as-is, is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/38096460/Settlement-in-tech-hiring-case http://www.scribd.com/doc/38096460/Settlement-in-tech-hiring.... The settlement imposed some restrictions on the companies' hiring practices, but those restrictions included significant carve-outs, some of which I discussed at http://www.oncontracts.com/dojs-employee-solicitation-consent-decree-for-silicon-valley-companies-the-exceptions-are-the-most-interesting-part/ http://www.oncontracts.com/dojs-employee-solicitation-consen....
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The antitrust laws have criminal and civil components as well as governmental and private aspects. The government may prosecute violators of the antitrust laws and impose criminal or civil punishments. These are punitive. Private plaintiffs may then sue for monetary injuries they personally suffered. The fact that it takes the form of a class action just means a bunch of private claims are considered as a class. It does not change the fact that they are private claims. This particular case was pursued by the government. The companies settled with the DOJ: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f272300/272393.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f272300/272393.htm. See: http://www.mintz.com/newsletter/2011/Advisories/0858-0111-NAT-AFR/web.htm http://www.mintz.com/newsletter/2011/Advisories/0858-0111-NA.... The DOJ has a policy against entering into confidential settlement agreements: http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/50.23 http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/50.23. While it is in theory legal for them to do so, this regulation makes any such attempt potentially subject to litigation.

fsk 13y ago

Suppose the settlement was $6B and 60k members are in the class. That's $100k per worker. However, the lawyers usually get 1/3, so $2B for the lawyers and $67k per worker. That's the offensive part about class action lawsuits like this. The lawyers MAKE A FORTUNE. The class victims get a decent check, but nothing great, and probably less than they lost due to the crime.

harryh 13y ago
The lawyers also do all the work and take on all the risk.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Upvoted, because as much as I hate your answer, you're right.
- Stratoscope 13y ago
  > The lawyers also do all the work and take on all the risk. Except for being the ones who were actually harmed in the matter. Edit: Despite my snarky reply, I'm with toomuchtodo - I upvoted your post even if I felt annoyed by it at first, because you make a very good and valid point and it gave me food for thought. Why was I annoyed by your post, then? Probably my Borland check. It must have been about 20 years ago, but there was some class action suit on Borland stock. I was in the class and from the numbers they sent out, it looked like I might actually get some real money out of it, at least a thousand bucks or so. Then my check came. $17. I pored through the documents to see what had gone wrong, and I found it: there was a limited settlement fund, I think around $12 million, only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions that the original class action notification had talked about. Out of the $12 million settlement fund, the lawyers got $7.5 million. I'm going to quit software development and get into that business.
  - DannyBee 13y ago

rwmj 13y ago

How come no one goes to prison? (Genuine question: does US monopoly law not allow that outcome?)

sethhochberg 13y ago
A lawsuit case like this is a civil matter - judgements / settlements are made based on some violation of a legal agreement between two parties. Violation of that legal agreement may or may not be a criminal issue. For someone to go to prison, a criminal case would be needed, requiring criminal acts - not just violations of a legal agreement - and government prosecutor willing to bring charges against the parties allegedly responsible. It seems there were (probably) criminal acts here, but as of yet we've not seen a prosecutor go after the case. These kind of things can be further complicated in the US because of the different standards of proof required for each case type. In a criminal case, the state must be able to prove "beyond any doubt" that the defendant is indeed guilty. Civil cases have a much less ironclad standard for guilt/responsibility, and can often be easier to "win" as a result. Its certainly possible that government prosecutors are aware of the issue, and aware of the civil settlement, but don't believe they could prepare a compelling enough case based on the evidence available to win a criminal trial against undoubtedly well-legally-represented executives.
- bagels 13y ago
  The emails seem like fairly good evidence for criminal misconduct, but I am not a court nor a lawyer.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    Errr, what criminal law do you believe it violates?
    - mullingitover 13y ago
      Obstruction of justice? The emails explicitly state that the planning should be taken offline, presumably to thwart any future investigation.

bsder 13y ago

And $6 billion split between all the companies involved is a rounding error. Make the fine $6 trillion and now you're talking something that will likely deter this behavior. $100K per worker is irrelevant compared to the amount of money the companies gained by holding down salaries even 5% after compounding. It's not like everybody's salary jumps up the lost amount after this.

soup10 13y ago
I disagree, 6B is a large number. Settlements of that size are probably pretty rare. I think the tech companies caved quickly because of the round after round of bad press they were getting(which was doing a number to their "we care about our employees" propaganda). Should be interesting to see how it's distributed.
tptacek 13y ago
By putting the companies out of business, and all their employees out of work?
- briantakita 13y ago
  From the ashes of immoral companies, better ones will prosper.
- bsder 13y ago
  So, illegal behavior is fine as long as it provides jobs? You might want to think about your statement a little harder. Yes, the penalty should be high enough that the company goes bankrupt if they lose 2 or 3 of these kinds of cases.
harryh 13y ago
According to the NYTimes link, the actual plaintiffs in this lawsuit claimed that employees had lost out on ~3B in wages due to the fixing. Why do you think they're wrong in this claim?
- bsder 13y ago

jonathankoren 13y ago

This is just absurd. I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case. There are multiple emails that proposing the conspiracy, executing the conspiracy, expanding the conspiracy, and warnings to the ringleaders of the conspiracy (i.e. Jobs, Schmidt, Whittman, Lucas, etc.) being told explicitly what they were doing was illegal, and then actively taking actions to cover it up. (Specifically I refer to Eric Schmidt's email in which he said regarding the Apple-Google agreement, "I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later".) The only way you can prevent this, and other kinds of organized and large scale fraud is through confiscation of revenue on a massive scale. To make the companies hurt and to directly effect the officers of the companies. Otherwise, these settlements are simply noise, and a chalked up as a cost of doing business. Here's some numbers to keep in mind, when the settlement is announced. Google $16.86 BILLION in revenue Q4-2013 Apple $37.5 BILLION ($7B profit) Q4-2013 eBay $4.5 BILLION Q4-2013 Unless the settlement is in the tens-of-billions of dollars, it's nothing. (Bonus points, if they settle, "while admitting no guilt.")

whoismua 13y ago
I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case. Lawyers? Maybe they did the math and realized they could pocket $XXX million to $1 Billion if they settled. On the other hand, engineers might get a $10 Adwords coupon or a free song on iTunes.
- anxman 13y ago
  The attorneys are probably making a simple calculation: a) Take a $1b settlement today, yielding $500m for attorneys. b) Take a chance on a $5b judgement that is then challenged with years of appeals and possibly reduced arbitrarily by a defendant-friendly judge down the road. The law firm probably is just happy to get the money.
  - whoismua 13y ago
    Bingo, that was my reasoning too. Bird in hand and all. Probably that's enough money to make every lawyer in their firm a millionaire (not that it's divided evenly) so why take the chance?

sneak 13y ago

This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. How hard would it have been to say "anything Google offers you, we'll double it, so don't fucking leave? We're busy changing the world here, and that would be a pointless setback." It's not like Apple is exactly cash-strapped, and it's not like he didn't know the value of his teams ("means war" clearly speaks to that).

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
briantakita 13y ago
> This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. Jobs was a player. Look at how he played Wozniak, the mother of his daughter, & his daughter. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-movie/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-mov...
lutusp 13y ago
> This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs. I tried to work with Jobs in the late 70s and early 80s, and I couldn't stand him. After a brief spell I refused to work with Apple any more. Since then I've been waiting for the world to catch up with my already low opinion. :) Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book.
- sneak 13y ago
  > Apropos, everyone should read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, it's a terrific book. Despite never having met or worked with the guy, I gotta side with Gruber's take on this one: Isaacson totally missed the boat. He was granted unprecedented (and now, unfortunately, impossible) access to a fiercely interesting person's life, and either his lack of contextual understanding or lack of domain knowledge led to a book that is, at best, underwhelming. His questions, his analysis, it all seemed so pedestrian and boring. Maybe the lack of hard questions or deep insights is why Jobs chose him in particular to be granted such access, but I personally expected a whole fuck of a lot more from something that had so much promise to begin with. I feel like Mossberg or maybe even someone who doesn't write as their profession (Ive? Kottke? Kawasaki?) might have done a vastly better job. Maybe I just wish I'd had a chance to know the guy, deeply flawed character and all, and no text will ultimately be sufficient - but Isaacson's effort left me with so many more basic questions than it even began to attempt to ask, much less answer. And now, all that potential wisdom to be gleaned from this specific instance falls into the realm of the unlearnable. Perhaps that was the plan. Who are we to assume his legacy was any less meticulously crafted than anything else he unleashed upon the world?

abalone 13y ago

I'm somewhere between the sentiments expressed here. I'm thankful there's a strong incentive for top-notch law firms to pursue cases like this. I doubt this would have happened otherwise. My concern is that a ~35% cut may motivate the firms to settle for much less than would be meaningful for the victims. The firm would gross a billion dollars on a $3B settlement, while the victims would get an average of $30K. And considering how expensive a trial is, I can see them settling for much less. I don't know much about this field, but I wonder if it would make more sense for the court to take vote among the class members rather than letting the firm decide themselves. Or is it just up to the judge to decide if it's fair and in the best interests of the class?

judk 13y ago
The settlement was $324million for (64,000 class members and the attorney fees).
- abalone 13y ago
  So the figure leaked. Wow, that ain't sh*t.
dredmorbius 13y ago
It's a form of the principle-agent problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem Freakonomics identified a similar bias in real estate: realtors (earning a percentage of sales) work less hard for clients' home sales than they do their own, where the additional price received is worth more time.
geebee 13y ago
Would it make more sense to have a government agency handle the litigation for class action lawsuits? I'm thinking of something like anti-trust lawsuits, which I believe can be initiated by both state attorneys and private law firms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Remedies_and_enforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Rem... I'm not necessarily advocating for this, because I suspect there are a lot of implications I haven't thought through... however, I'm leaning toward it as an idea. The big problem I see here is that the real victory for a law firm in a very compelling class action is mainly in gaining the right to represent the class. At this point, the risks become asymmetrical, because the payout for the lawyers on a settlement is so high that it makes no sense to engage in even mildly risky behavior, even if the expected return is far higher with litigation. If you and 10 other lawyers are going to get to split 300 million, would you press for litigation that had an 80% chance of returning a billion, and a 20% chance of returning nothing? That lottery would probably be the basis for extracting a good settlement, but it makes sense that lawyers would be extremely reluctant to take that risk, because the outcomes for them are tons of money for sure and probably tons of money but maybe no money. The order of magnitude gets lost in the gain, so only the risk remains as a consideration. Would state prosecutors, who stand to build a career on this but will be paid "the same" regardless of the outcome, do a far worse job?

briantakita 13y ago

The moral of the story... If you have a business, it is almost always to your advantage to break the law in pursuit of profit. Even lawsuits, rare as they are, are cheaper than following the law.

whoismua 13y ago
True, this will only change when Mr CEO or HR person gets jail time.
- briantakita 13y ago
  Since the companies are considered people, they should also get jail time. That should motivate shareholders to insist on scrupulous behavior.
  - politician 13y ago
    Corporate jail time (i.e. barring a company from operating in the marketplace) is equivalent to a death sentence for most companies. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear some ideas about what else "jail time" for a corporation might mean.
    - aniro 13y ago
      The core of the Citizens United decision was that becoming a member of a group (ie: Corporation) did not abrogate individual rights. The implication is that groups of people have the exact same rights as individuals. I think there needs to be a corollary in terms of responsibility. Of course, the entire raison d'etre of modern corporations is to indemnify the members against responsibility for the actions of the group.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      >Corporate jail time (i.e. barring a company from operating in the marketplace) is equivalent to a death sentence for most companies. It's an economic death sentence for most individuals, too.

guimarin 13y ago

Reuters is reporting the settlement to be about $324million. So an order of magnitude less than speculated here. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-lawsuit-exclusive-idUSBREA3N28Z20140424 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-la... And just in case anyone is wondering that works out to: $3375 per employee effected.

georgemcbay 13y ago
And more importantly it works to: $totally worth it for the companies involved. 324/4 = $81 million each (assuming they split it evenly, I have no idea how that division works). While each employee represented in this suit got the shaft, the bigger problem (IMO) is that the punitive cost for the individual companies is small enough (relative to their sizes and how much they likely saved by engaging in this practice) that it alone is unlikely to change any future behavior.

rhizome 13y ago

The fix is in. The class is represented by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, which has a long history of getting low settlements in big cases. They are a false-flag shill firm working for the benefit of themselves and the defendant companies. Like scofflaws Archer Daniels Midland, they are long-time sponsors of NPR, so don't expect any hard-hitting reporting from the mainstream-left in the US.

dredmorbius 13y ago
Citation required.
- rhizome 13y ago
  It's simple math. Here's a case of theirs that was way under-settled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Uninsured_Patient_Hospital_Pricing_Litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Uninsured_Patient_Ho... A whopping $3K-tops/year per class member: http://www.lieffcabraser.com/Case-Center/Comdata.shtml http://www.lieffcabraser.com/Case-Center/Comdata.shtml
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    That's 1) a single datapoint and 2) doesn't show how LCHB compares with other law firms in class-action cases. I'm not doubting, or believing, your assertion. I'm requesting something more material than mere assertion. I actually tend to share your skepticism of significant NPR sponsors -- too many companies in need of whitewashing / greenwashing seem to end up in that role, to the point it's tainted the brand. Now I think "Oh, I wonder what that company is trying to atone for" when I hear a credit (if I don't already know, e.g., Walmart, Microsoft, Monsanto, Comcast, etc.).
    - rhizome 13y ago
      Frankly I couldn't care less about how other law firms do in class-actions. In this issue we have LCHB and the settlement as leaked/rumored totally stinks for the kind of activites, admitted intentions, we have here. So it doesn't matter how LCHB compares to others, what matters is that they aren't doing a good enough job here. I mean, come on, isn't it suspicious how quickly all of this was worked out?

Bahamut 13y ago

Can anyone answer this question - for what appears to be a rockstar case, is there any reason why someone would opt for a class action suit and not sue on their own?

jjwiseman 13y ago

I like to imagine the cognitive dissonance this is causing in Google employees ("Google is good" / "Those emails are damning evidence of a conspiracy to break the law") leading to explosive outbursts and aggressive responses on eng-misc.

oh_sigh 13y ago
eng-misc is the area for the most cynical of employees. you really don't know anything if you expect them to be experiencing cognitive dissonance as you stated.

tfthrowaway 13y ago

I worked for one of these firms during the time period mentioned (as I suspect many other readers here did). Does that automatically make me one of the class members? How do I find out more?

lacker 13y ago
If you are one of the class members you should have received mail. They might not have the right address. You could try contacting the law firm.
xorgar831 13y ago
https://www.hightechemployeelawsuit.com/ https://www.hightechemployeelawsuit.com/ Though I think the deadline has passed... you had to register to be part of it. Update: oh, I take that back, you have until 4/26/2014 it says.

defen 13y ago

So I ask this only half-jokingly - at this point, what self-respecting engineer would continue to work at Google, Apple, or these other firms? I mean, these guys conspired to illegally suppress your wages, but you're essentially a bunch of suckers who get paid off with a comfortable living, "interesting work," and a bonus check for a couple thousand dollars and you're happy. Meanwhile the people behind this are making literally billions of dollars of profit.

cloudwalking 13y ago
I think you answer your own question :) Comfortable living, interesting work, and big bonus checks (tens of thousands for many, hundreds of thousands for some) are indeed what attract a lot of employees. Larry, Sergey, and Eric are universally loved inside of Google, I don't think people mind that they are billionaires. It's not like they're taking $500MM a year in salary.
- defen 13y ago
  Thank you for making my point for me. BTW the bonus checks I was referring to were the settlement payouts, not normal annual bonuses.
- AxeFights 13y ago
  Nope, just a mere 83 thousand shares of stock per year. It's quite modest. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=GOOG+Insider+Transactions http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=GOOG+Insider+Transactions
fixermark 13y ago
Salaried employment is made of suckers who can be compensated with less than they might be worth because the alternative is a world where they would have to fight for every scrip, scrap, and slice that they are owed. I've been on both sides of that coin---I've worked for the startups and I've worked for "the industry." Am I being "taken advantage of?" Am I being paid less than I'm worth? Probably. But I wouldn't trade the comfortable life of knowing my paycheck won't bounce for the hardscrabble life of the startup cowboy any day of the week. I'm curious what your recommendation is. Is there a third option? Are you recommending people not work for the firms specifically involved in the settlement? I guess I could always look into IBM...

skkbits 13y ago

Honest question: Who gets the settlement ? Anyone who worked for defendants between certain years ? How do they determine 60K employees ? What if someone has left the industry altogether or in an unfortunate case, is no more ? Can someone shed light on this area ?

dredmorbius 13y ago

Pity. I'd have liked to see the disclosures forced by going to trial, as well as a far more substantial penalty. Is there any indication if earlier DoJ action prevents a future investigation and penalty for this?

abalone 13y ago

New report with the $amount ($324M): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7645182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7645182