Judge Rejects Settlement in Hiring Suit Against Google, Apple and Intel

I'm really glad to see the judge has rejected the settlement. People seemed very surprised with it.

I see three main perspectives here. The members of the class want compensation and justice. The lawyers want to be paid. And a larger group, ranging from engineers who are not part of the class to the public in general, wants to be sure that a small group of powerful CEOs and other inside players don't collude illegally against the workforce.

The lawyers are obviously very risk averse. They have a crack at a huge amount of money, virtually guaranteed as long as they settle. It's so much money that the would rationally accept a small fraction of the possible win at trial.

The class wants compensation, but the individual cut is small enough that there is probably more incentive to go to trial. If someone offered me 50 million or a 70% chance at 300 million, I'd hesitate. Really. Because there isn't that big a difference in my life between those two numbers - in a way, it's a choice between a life guaranteed free from any financial worry, or merely a good chance of it. But remove a bunch of zeroes, offer me 5,000 or a 70% chance at 30,000, and I'd take the latter. This, I think, represents the difference between the lawyers and the class (and it's why so many people think the whole approach is broken and should be handled by a federal or state prosecutor).

Lastly, of course, there is the use of litigation as a way to pry information out of companies that would prefer to keep it quiet. While the public may in general not have a specific stake in this, everyone has an interest in preventing collusion. This class, as it stands to gain nothing but information, would probably take the highest risk approach. They'd like to see a heavy penalty, but most important to them is the litigation itself and the information that comes to light.

I'm in the third group, so obviously I'm happy to see this. But my guess is that a lot of the engineers in the class would prefer a higher risk strategy as well. Money in compensation is nice, but most of the engineers affected here are probably reasonably successful financially, but they must be pretty angry, with the companies and with this settlement.

This is getting good. Finally. I love Steve and menu other top execs, but even prison fits rasonably here.