Apple, Google, and other companies have agreed to pay $415 million to end a class-action lawsuit that says they made an illegal cartel to stop their workers from quitting for better-paying employment. The settlement was filed Thursday in San Jose, California. It revises an agreement where plaintiffs asked for $3 billion in damages. Attorneys for the plaintiffs decided to settle after determining that it would be hard to prove that there was a conspiracy to agree that Apple and Google wouldn’t recruit each other’s employees.
If the judge approves the deal that the company filed on Thursday, eligible workers at Google, Apple, Adobe, and Intel would get about $5,200 each. If the case had gone to trial, they could have gotten at least $100,000 each.
