Apple has more than $150 billion in the bank, eclipsing the combined cash reserves of Israel and Britain. Google, Intel and Adobe have a total of about $80 billion stored up for a rainy day. Against such tremendous cash hoards, $324 million is chump change. But that is what the four technology companies have agreed to pay to settle a class action brought by their own employees. The suit, which was on track to go to trial in San Jose, Calif., at the end of May, promised weeks if not months of damaging revelations about how Silicon Valley executives conspired to suppress wages and limit competition. Details of the settlement are still under wraps. Michael Devine, a 46-year-old freelance programmer who is one of the four plaintiffs named in the suit, thinks the companies are getting off far too lightly. In a very rare form of protest, he sent a letter this weekend to the judge in the case, Lucy H. Koh of United States District Court for the Northern District of California, asking her to reject the deal that his own lawyers negotiated. “The class wants a chance at real justice,” he wrote. “We want our day in court.” He noted that the settlement amount was about one-tenth of the estimated $3 billion lost in compensation by the 64,000 class members. In a successful trial, antitrust laws would triple that sum. “As an analogy,” Mr. Devine wrote, “if a shoplifter is caught on video stealing a $400 iPad from the Apple Store, would a fair and just resolution be for the shoplifter to pay Apple $40, keep the iPad, and walk away with no record or admission of wrongdoing? Of course not.”
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 07:46:15 +0000
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