Pass the Popcorn

The judge reviewing the collusion among Silicon Valley firms to suppress high tech wages has just ruled the settlement to be inadequate:

The judge overseeing the landmark Silicon Valley wage theft antitrust lawsuit has struck down the $324 million settlement reached between most of the class action plaintiffs and the defendants — Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe.

In her 32-page order striking down the settlement terms, issued just moments ago, US District Judge Lucy Koch writes:

“This Court has lived with this case for nearly three years, and during that time, the Court has reviewed a significant number of documents in adjudicating not only the substantive motions, but also the voluminous sealing requests. Having done so, the Court cannot conclude that the instant settlement falls within the range of reasonableness. As this Court stated in its summary judgment order, there is ample evidence of an overarching conspiracy between the seven Defendants…”

This is stunning news, and it means that we still may get a trial after all, and learn more about the Techtopus wage theft conspiracy.

Judge Koh bases her rejection by comparing the $324 million sum to the earlier settlement in 2013 with three other defendants in the wage-theft lawsuit: Intuit, LucasFilm and Pixar. Judging by that metric, Judge Koh argues that the settlement figure should have been at least $380 million. She also cites the “strength” of the plaintiffs’ case against the Big Tech defendants, and rejects the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ argument about the difficulties in winning an antitrust wage theft lawsuit of this scope.

This should get interesting for a number of reasons:

• The documents make it pretty clear that the plaintiffs' claims are airtight. (They also prove that Steve Jobs was a sociopathic @sshole, but that has been common knowledge for decades within the tech sector)
• If the case proceeds, discovery should create even more damning information.
• The blatant illegality of the behavior is such that the insurance carriers for the tech firms may end up suing them, claiming that the behavior is covered under the "deliberate acts" exclusions that almost all liability insurance policies contain.

This should be entertaining.