By Jeff Elder 

Lawyers for 64,000 current and former workers have reached a new settlement with four Silicon Valley companies they accuse of conspiring not to hire each other's employees, suppressing wages from 2005 to 2009, according to representatives of both sides and a document filed Tuesday.

Details of the proposed settlement with Apple Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., couldn't be learned. The proposal is expected to be filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, one lawyer said.

Tuesday, a lawyer for the companies filed a document with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, saying the two sides had "reached a new settlement agreement." The companies had appealed Judge Koh's decision to throw out the earlier settlement.

Without a new settlement, a trial in the case is scheduled to start on April 10.

In August, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected an earlier proposed settlement of $324.5 million as insufficient. Judge Koh said workers at three other companies that had previously settled in the same case received more money. To reach the same rate, the judge said, the settlement "would need to total at least $380 million."

Judge Koh ruled after one of the named plaintiffs, former Adobe engineer Michael Devine, opposed the settlement, saying it would bring the plaintiffs' attorneys $8 million in legal fees, while the affected workers would average about $5,000 apiece.

Mr. Devine's lawyer, Daniel Girard, said Tuesday that his client supports the new proposed settlement.

Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel, confirmed that a new deal had been reached.

Representatives for Apple and Google declined to comment. An Adobe representative couldn't be reached.

The suit followed a 2011 Justice Department case, and claims the companies conspired to not recruit each other's tech talent, hurting the workers' job market and depressing wages.

The companies said the pay for workers during this period rose and any cooperation between companies didn't hurt employees' pay.

During pretrial proceedings in the class-action antitrust case, emails from top executives including the late Steve Jobs, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and then-CEO Eric Schmidt surfaced, showing the executives conferred on hiring plans, sometimes through intermediaries.

News of the new settlement was earlier reported by Reuters.

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

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