“The class wants a chance at real justice,” he wrote. “We want our day in court.”

He noted that the settlement amount was about one-tenth of the estimated $3 billion lost in compensation by the 64,000 class members. In a successful trial, antitrust laws would triple that sum.

“As an analogy,” Mr. Devine wrote, “if a shoplifter is caught on video stealing a $400 iPad from the Apple Store, would a fair and just resolution be for the shoplifter to pay Apple $40, keep the iPad, and walk away with no record or admission of wrongdoing? Of course not.”

The settlement would greatly benefit the companies, by making an embarrassing case disappear. And it would benefit the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the firms Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Joseph Saveri Law Firm, with as much as $75 million in fees. But it would give the class members a few thousand dollars each, if that.

In a typical court case, a plaintiff who disagrees with his lawyers can fire them. But a plaintiff in a class action, even one whose name is on the suit, has fewer options. Legal experts said many of the members of the class would need to rise up in support of Mr. Devine to give him even a hope of succeeding.

While that might be unlikely, this case has been confounding expectations from the beginning. The original suits took on some of the most admired companies and executives in the country, including Apple and Steven P. Jobs, on behalf of workers who did not appear oppressed. The cases seemed destined to go nowhere, much less be combined into a powerful class action.