By Jeff Elder
Top Google Inc. executives won't have to explain to a jury why
emails were sent to an irate Steve Jobs at Apple Inc. promising not
to recruit his employees.
Four big Silicon Valley technology companies agreed Thursday to
settle a lawsuit in which 64,000 employees accused them of
conspiring between 2005-2009 not to recruit each other's workers,
thereby depressing wages. Terms of the settlement involving Apple,
Google, Intel Corp., and Adobe Systems Inc. weren't immediately
released.
During pretrial proceedings in the class-action antitrust case,
emails from top executives including former Mr. Jobs, Google
co-founder Sergey Brin and then-CEO Eric Schmidt surfaced, showing
the executives conferred on hiring plans, sometimes through
intermediaries. An attorney for the plaintiffs said questioning
those big names before a jury would have been probable.
The defendants recently filed motions seeking to exclude
evidence--including testimony that made Mr. Jobs appear to be a
"bully."
"Steve being agitated was not unusual," Mr. Brin testified in a
deposition, discussing Mr. Jobs' phone calls to Google executives
about not "poaching" workers. Spokespeople for the defendants said
that avoiding that kind of testimony and having executives on the
witness stand made a settlement attractive.
"We are settling this matter to avoid the risks of litigation,"
said Chuck Mulloy of Intel. "We still deny violating any laws or
obligations to plaintiffs."
"We're pleased with the results," said Kelly M. Dermody, a
lawyer for the plaintiffs at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein
LLP, who said attorneys "have had their heads down working
furiously on this for months." Nineteen dark-suited attorneys for
both sides crowded a pretrial conference in March.
The five named plaintiffs in the case, tech workers representing
the class of workers at the companies, couldn't be reached for
comment.
The employees had been seeking $3 billion in damages. Under
antitrust rules, that could have been tripled to $9 billion. How
much the four defendants will settle for remains a question. One
source close to the case said $1 billion would be a ballpark
figure, but another said that number was high.
Thursday's settlement follows settlements reached last year with
Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar, and Intuit Inc. for a combined $20
million.
The civil case followed a 2010 Justice Department case on the
same matter.
The case had been set to begin May 27 before U.S. District Judge
Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif.
The case revealed how an inner circle of Silicon Valley
executives communicated during a period in which the
interoperability of companies' products was often discussed. Emails
between the executives made compelling reading in Silicon
Valley--and embarrassment for the executives and their
companies.
At one point, Google's Mr. Schmidt emailed another executive at
his company to say that they should only confer on agreements not
to recruit from other companies "verbally, since I don't want to
create a paper trail over which we can be sued later."
Write to Jeff Elder at jeff.elder@wsj.com
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