Reuters:

One of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses tech firms including Apple Inc and Google Inc of conspiring to hold down salaries has asked the court to reject a $324 million settlement negotiated by his own lawyers.

Michael Devine, one of the four named plaintiffs in a class action of 64,000 people, described the tentative settlement as “grossly inadequate” in a letter to the judge in the case.

The proposed settlement is about one-tenth of experts’ estimates of potential damages and is lacking in any penalty, he said.

How different was the original goal versus the announced settlement?

The workers planned to ask for $3 billion in damages at a trial scheduled to begin at the end of May, according to court filings. That could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law.

That’s a huge difference.