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Comment by joshavant | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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?

> 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.... 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-consen....

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. See: 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. While it is in theory legal for them to do so, this regulation makes any such attempt potentially subject to litigation.

The DOJ document looks like they payed no fines, and essentially just promised not to do it again. Isn't this conceptually inconsistent with them paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to the class plaintiffs. Do they face any repercussions for the harm they did to developers outside the class due to lower market wages?

The federal government is not a party to this suit, at least not based on the complaint that I saw.

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-go...

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 :)

64k engineers ought to be enough for anyone (to reconstruct the initial settlement value).

I would think the judge need to approve the settlement before the claims are mailed.

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.

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

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.

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.

A judge would never approve such a high contingency fee. Standard contingency fee is about 35%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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