On Friday afternoon, a US district judge for the Northern District of California rejected a settlement proposed by four major tech companies—Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe—in a class-action lawsuit over improper hiring practices. The four companies were accused of conspiring to keep each others' employees from being poached, thus limiting their employees' potential salaries and stunting job opportunities.

A group of employees sued the four companies for this practice back in 2011, and in April of this year, the companies agreed to settle the case and pay back $324.5 million to more than 60,000 workers that ended up in the class. Today, however, US District Judge Lucy Koh said the settlement amount was not enough and "falls below the range of reasonableness."

The case has been followed closely, not least because a number of private e-mail exchanges between the heads of these major companies had been made public. With the earlier promise of a jury trial, it looked for a time like even more salient details would come to light. In April, The New York Times found one e-mail in which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wrote to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, "If you hire a single one of these people, that means war.” In other court documents, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Jobs that a Google recruiter who had solicited an Apple employee would be fired.

As Reuters reports, some of the plaintiffs were ready to accept the deal with Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe, arguing that the employees might stand to lose if the trial had gone to appeal. “However, some tech workers filed objections to the settlement, saying both sides should go back to the negotiating table in the hopes of obtaining a larger amount," the article stated. Judge Koh agreed.

Lucasfilm, Intuit, and Pixar were also named as defendants in the original lawsuit, but those companies settled long ago for $20 million between them. As Ars reported in April, only eight percent of the class members worked at those three companies.