By Jeff Elder 

Top Google Inc. executives won't have to explain to a jury why emails were sent to an irate Steve Jobs at Apple Inc. promising not to recruit his employees.

Four big Silicon Valley technology companies agreed Thursday to settle a lawsuit in which 64,000 employees accused them of conspiring between 2005-2009 not to recruit each other's workers, thereby depressing wages. Terms of the settlement involving Apple, Google, Intel Corp., and Adobe Systems Inc. weren't immediately released.

During pretrial proceedings in the class-action antitrust case, emails from top executives including former Mr. Jobs, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and then-CEO Eric Schmidt surfaced, showing the executives conferred on hiring plans, sometimes through intermediaries. An attorney for the plaintiffs said questioning those big names before a jury would have been probable.

The defendants recently filed motions seeking to exclude evidence--including testimony that made Mr. Jobs appear to be a "bully."

"Steve being agitated was not unusual," Mr. Brin testified in a deposition, discussing Mr. Jobs' phone calls to Google executives about not "poaching" workers. Spokespeople for the defendants said that avoiding that kind of testimony and having executives on the witness stand made a settlement attractive.

"We are settling this matter to avoid the risks of litigation," said Chuck Mulloy of Intel. "We still deny violating any laws or obligations to plaintiffs."

"We're pleased with the results," said Kelly M. Dermody, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, who said attorneys "have had their heads down working furiously on this for months." Nineteen dark-suited attorneys for both sides crowded a pretrial conference in March.

The five named plaintiffs in the case, tech workers representing the class of workers at the companies, couldn't be reached for comment.

The employees had been seeking $3 billion in damages. Under antitrust rules, that could have been tripled to $9 billion. How much the four defendants will settle for remains a question. One source close to the case said $1 billion would be a ballpark figure, but another said that number was high.

Thursday's settlement follows settlements reached last year with Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar, and Intuit Inc. for a combined $20 million.

The civil case followed a 2010 Justice Department case on the same matter.

The case had been set to begin May 27 before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif.

The case revealed how an inner circle of Silicon Valley executives communicated during a period in which the interoperability of companies' products was often discussed. Emails between the executives made compelling reading in Silicon Valley--and embarrassment for the executives and their companies.

At one point, Google's Mr. Schmidt emailed another executive at his company to say that they should only confer on agreements not to recruit from other companies "verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later."

Write to Jeff Elder at jeff.elder@wsj.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Intel Charts.
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Intel Charts.