Less than six months after a federal judge in San Jose signed off on a $415 million antitrust class action settlement to resolve Silicon Valley “no poaching” claims, a parallel fight involving many of the same lawyers is taking shape in the Southeast.
This time, the case involves faculty at top North Carolina medical schools, not workers at Google Inc., Apple Inc. and other technology heavyweights. But both cases allege that the defendants violated antitrust laws by agreeing not to hire or recruit each other’s employees. And Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein—one of the plaintiffs firms still fighting in California for a share of up to $81 million in fees—is leading the faculty members’ case in North Carolina.
