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I'm not sure if you've both been following this story, but this isn't a random lawsuit. The big companies all got together to stop them 'poaching' their other employees. This essentially means that if you were working for Apple, Google, or Adobe (to name a few) you couldn't get hired by the other company. There's even an email shown where Steve Jobs was going mad at Google over them trying to hire an Apple employee.

This severely screws over the hard-working employee. It means that they don't have an opportunity to work in another large tech company. It also means they don't have much to go on when negotiating for wage, because they're not going to be offered a job by their direct competitors.

It's evil, immoral, and shameful.

That's absolutely right. Employees have every right to be pissed and to sue for damages. Shareholders have no right suing Apple over this. This guy wants to make money off a rich company. Nothing more. Also what gives him the right to sue "on the behalf of all shareholders". He can't prove this affected him or other shareholders negatively and should be told to go home.
 
This severely screws over the hard-working employee. It means that they don't have an opportunity to work in another large tech company. It also means they don't have much to go on when negotiating for wage, because they're not going to be offered a job by their direct competitors.

It's evil, immoral, and shameful.
But it's the American way.
 
Why isn't this handled by contract law through employment contracts?

Why in the hell do we need the feds to regulate how companies hire (or don't hire) employees?
 
Thats the way to increase share holder value! Sue the company you invest in for something they are already being sued for. So your dividend can be even less!
 
I'm not sure if you've both been following this story, but this isn't a random lawsuit. The big companies all got together to stop them 'poaching' their other employees. This essentially means that if you were working for Apple, Google, or Adobe (to name a few) you couldn't get hired by the other company. There's even an email shown where Steve Jobs was going mad at Google over them trying to hire an Apple employee.

This severely screws over the hard-working employee. It means that they don't have an opportunity to work in another large tech company. It also means they don't have much to go on when negotiating for wage, because they're not going to be offered a job by their direct competitors.

It's evil, immoral, and shameful.

I missed the part where there are only 3 choices in Silicon Valley for employment. There are all kinds of barriers to being hired for your dream job. This is just another one and the people complaining here would have already worked at one of those other big companies. I fail to see just how evil it is to "lock" in employees. Instead of bribing them to stay (which is still an option), you're making an agreement with other companies not to hire them just like a non-compete contract would do.
 
This essentially means that if you were working for Apple, Google, or Adobe (to name a few) you couldn't get hired by the other company.

A clarification: the agreement was to stop trying to recruit each other's employees. Employees were allegedly still free to apply for employment at the other companies, on their own.

In practice, I'm not sure that was the case. Participants in the agreement may have declined to make an offer to an otherwise desirable employee because they already worked for one of the other companies. But, it's not likely that's documented anywhere.
 
I'm not sure if you've both been following this story, but this isn't a random lawsuit. The big companies all got together to stop them 'poaching' their other employees. This essentially means that if you were working for Apple, Google, or Adobe (to name a few) you couldn't get hired by the other company. There's even an email shown where Steve Jobs was going mad at Google over them trying to hire an Apple employee.

This severely screws over the hard-working employee. It means that they don't have an opportunity to work in another large tech company. It also means they don't have much to go on when negotiating for wage, because they're not going to be offered a job by their direct competitors.

It's evil, immoral, and shameful.

What does this have to do with a stockholder suit? There have been plenty of discussions about the anti-poaching policy and subsequent fines. This isn't one of them.
 
I totally agree. And I agree Apple and the other companies should be sanctioned by the regulatory authorities and the workers concerned, as they have been (or are in the process of being).

That's already happened:

Justice Department Requires Six High Tech Companies to Stop Entering into Anticompetitive Employee Solicitation Agreements

The article mentions a settlement that has to be approved by a court, but I haven't found an article that details what it entails.

There's also a separate announcement by the DoJ for a similar sanction against eBay.

There has been at least one settlement in regard to this issue, but it was for a class-action lawsuit by employees, not the DoJ. The settlement involving Apple was recently rejected by the judge as inadequate.

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Why isn't this handled by contract law through employment contracts?

Why in the hell do we need the feds to regulate how companies hire (or don't hire) employees?

In this case, the Department of Justice is enforcing federal anti-trust laws.
 
I agree that it screws over employees, but never before had it been argued that it screwed over one of the companies. In this case Apple. If it was disadvantageous to Apple in any way, why did they do it? Not losing key employees because of poaching would have been considered a positive. Arguing that they were unable to hire key people from Google and others means, that doing so, they would have risked losing key people therefore the net gain of talent would have potentially been a wash. Claiming it affected Apple's performance seems to ignore the fact that while the anti-poaching agreement was in place Apple recorded the greatest profits, enjoyed the highest stock price and generally performed better than it ever had in its history. Since the practice had stopped Apple has had a roller coaster of a ride in the stock market and has yet to come close to recapturing its all time high.

I agree with you. That said, let's try to understand the argument. I think it goes like this: Apple was engaged in an illegal action. Apple management was responsible for knowing this was illegal. Given that, they should have anticipated substantial fines. Therefore, Apple, in its public disclosures, was omitting a significant liability; therefore, misleading investors. Therefore, causing the high stock price you mention, based on false or misleading information.

I think it's BS. But that's the core argument of the suit, I believe.

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That's absolutely right. Employees have every right to be pissed and to sue for damages. Shareholders have no right suing Apple over this. This guy wants to make money off a rich company. Nothing more. Also what gives him the right to sue "on the behalf of all shareholders". He can't prove this affected him or other shareholders negatively and should be told to go home.

He doesn't have to prove this affected him negatively to win the suit. He only has to prove Apple knowingly disclosed false or misleading information. See my previous comment.
 
Apple should come to realize that it is not above the law. I guess it sees paying a severel hundred million dollar fine as a cost of business to keep its talent from jumping ship to other tech companies.

Then the law should prosecute. This is simply greed of shareholders, who think they know better how to run apple than apple.

I agree that apple should be prosecuted, like the other tech compnies that did this. But this lawsuit is nothing but greedy people feeling entitled.
 
Why are people defending Apple over this? Sounds like Apple deserve this if you ask me.
 
I'm not sure if you've both been following this story, but this isn't a random lawsuit. The big companies all got together to stop them 'poaching' their other employees. This essentially means that if you were working for Apple, Google, or Adobe (to name a few) you couldn't get hired by the other company. There's even an email shown where Steve Jobs was going mad at Google over them trying to hire an Apple employee.

This severely screws over the hard-working employee. It means that they don't have an opportunity to work in another large tech company. It also means they don't have much to go on when negotiating for wage, because they're not going to be offered a job by their direct competitors.

It's evil, immoral, and shameful.

This suit has nothing to do with that. Go back and read the article.
 
Once again, MacRumors is spouting off nonsense about legal filings its authors clearly haven't read or don't understand. To name just one, this is a shareholder derivative suit, which means the plaintiff must clear numerous obstacles before representing a class. One of those includes a demand on the board that they sign onto the suit, a demand they almost certainly will refuse. That doesn't end the case, but it illustrates how poorly grounded this story is.

Apart from that, there is almost no news value to reporting mere complaints, as this site often does. Anyone can file suit over anything. That doesn't mean the allegations are correct, or even tend to be correct. And no one gets to represent a class of others in a suit until daunting procedural hurdles (collectively known as class certification) are overcome. Stating, as this article does, that this clown "represents" shareholders is simply dead wrong. He wants to, but that won't happen anytime soon if indeed it ever does.

MR doesn't understand what it's reading, or it's reading the wrong things, or it's trying to pad its homepage with non-news that looks like news. I suspect all three problems exist here.
 
You're close, but one crucial difference. You couldn't get RECRUITED by the other company, they couldn't say "I have a new position and George over at Apple would be great for it, let's see if he's interested." But if George hears about a new position and applies for it, or even does some networking "would you be interested in me if I was to apply for it", George can get the job.

And there's some background - there was a thing called predatory recruitment, where, having heard about a big new project at your competitor, you hire away the people working on the project to at least delay if not completely kill the project. They didn't want the employee, they just wanted to kill the project (and the employee soon discovered at the new place that he wasn't really wanted and promises implied weren't kept). This proved to be less than great for the employee, having left a solid job (and particularly if they moved to, oh to pick a place at random, Redmond WA).

Yes, it was still wrong. They deserved to lose that lawsuit. But it's neither as bad as some had stated nor came out of nowhere.

This lawsuit, however, by the shareholder, is a money grab. It may be a successful money grab - there were bad actions involved, it'll be a chance for the people on the jury to say "it was wrong" and the fact that they're compensating someone not hurt may not be important to them.

You had me at "Redmond WA" , lol
 
Edit: deleting

After reading a few posts it's clear that I know less about this than I thought so I will just sit back and read.
 
Can we just kick California out of then union already? They just add to their high cost of living by trying to litigating the hell out of anything.
 
I'm not sure if you've both been following this story, but this isn't a random lawsuit. The big companies all got together to stop them 'poaching' their other employees. This essentially means that if you were working for Apple, Google, or Adobe (to name a few) you couldn't get hired by the other company. There's even an email shown where Steve Jobs was going mad at Google over them trying to hire an Apple employee.

This severely screws over the hard-working employee. It means that they don't have an opportunity to work in another large tech company. It also means they don't have much to go on when negotiating for wage, because they're not going to be offered a job by their direct competitors.

It's evil, immoral, and shameful.

Not quite. The agreement did not keep an employee from working elsewhere. As I understood the situation, the companies agreed not to actively go after each others' talent. If an individual employee made the inquiries to jump, they were not impeded per the agreement. I'm sure many did move around. Also, practice may not have matched the agreement.

I agree that actually blocking an individual from employment in another company would be bad. I do not have as much of a problem with agreeing not to proselytize.
 
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...Also what gives him the right to sue "on the behalf of all shareholders". He can't prove this affected him or other shareholders negatively and should be told to go home.

He doesn't have to prove this affected him negatively to win the suit. He only has to prove Apple knowingly disclosed false or misleading information. See my previous comment.

The article is wrong. The suit is a derivative action, which means that the plaintiff is suing on behalf of Apple against the directors of the company for abuse. What gives him standing to sue is the fact that he is a shareholder, which makes him a member of the company.
 
This lawsuit, however, by the shareholder, is a money grab. It may be a successful money grab - there were bad actions involved, it'll be a chance for the people on the jury to say "it was wrong" and the fact that they're compensating someone not hurt may not be important to them.

This very much remains to be seen. Anyone can file a class action suit, and many are filed, but that doesn't mean they will get a penny from it. They still have to demonstrate how the stockholders as a class were harmed, and the only way I see that happening is on the basis of the fines levied on Apple and the others by the courts for the collusion. The numbers really aren't that big, especially when spread out over all the shares of all the companies involved. As "money grabs" go, it seems pretty weak.

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I agree that it screws over employees, but never before had it been argued that it screwed over one of the companies. In this case Apple. If it was disadvantageous to Apple in any way, why did they do it? Not losing key employees because of poaching would have been considered a positive. Arguing that they were unable to hire key people from Google and others means, that doing so, they would have risked losing key people therefore the net gain of talent would have potentially been a wash. Claiming it affected Apple's performance seems to ignore the fact that while the anti-poaching agreement was in place Apple recorded the greatest profits, enjoyed the highest stock price and generally performed better than it ever had in its history. Since the practice had stopped Apple has had a roller coaster of a ride in the stock market and has yet to come close to recapturing its all time high.

Generally a good point, but it will be difficult for either Apple or the plaintiffs to establish any sort of cause and effect. The only real evidence the plaintiffs have in this case that their interests as stockholders were damaged is the dollar amount of the court settlement, and even that isn't known for certain yet.
 
This is stupid. If you sue a company you partially own, you're essentially suing yourself.

If there's a settlement and Apple pays out 100 million to share holders, the company is suddenly worth 100 million less. The shareholders gain nothing.

One of the main reasons to file a shareholder lawsuit is to force a company to do something, not necessarily to make money from the suit.
 
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