A class-action lawsuit against Google, Apple, Adobe, and Intel over how they recruited employees was scheduled to go to a jury trial at the end of next month. But it's not going to happen. Court papers filed today indicate that the case has been settled. Reuters reports that the total settlement sum, which is still not in public court papers, will be $324 million.

A New York Times report on this case, published Sunday, suggested that the parties were nearing settlement. That's no surprise considering how potentially embarrassing a jury trial could have been for all of these companies.

The lawsuit had already made e-mails between Steve Jobs and Google executives about the agreements public, and more information would have surely come out. Jobs in particular may not have looked good at trial. "If you hire a single one of these people, that means war," Jobs emailed Sergey Brin, as the Times noted in its post on today's settlement.

The dispute stems from a deal between several large tech companies to not "cold call" competitors' employees in order to recruit them. The Justice Department busted all the companies involved back in 2010, and the companies agreed to halt the practice. By agreeing to not compete for each others' employees, the companies had formed a kind of anticompetitive cabal that kept engineers' wages down.

Complying with the government demand did not mollify all of the affected workers, however. A class-action antitrust lawsuit was filed to compensate the engineers, who argued that the agreement had pushed down wages. Despite the companies' best efforts to avoid a class action, US District Judge Lucy Koh certified the class.

There were more than 60,000 workers in the class. Class members claimed that the "no cold calls" agreement resulted in $3 billion of lost wages, a far cry from the settlement agreement.

Pre-trial jockeying in the case included motions over how Jobs could be portrayed by plaintiffs' lawyers. Jobs' role included threatening Palm with a patent lawsuit when it wouldn't agree to the no-poaching scheme.

The plaintiffs' case took a disturbing turn when one of the five named plaintiffs, 43-year-old programmer Brandon Marshall, died under disturbing circumstances. According to the Times story, Marshall was shot and killed by a Santa Clara County sheriff's deputy in December after he attacked the deputy with a five-inch metal spike. The deputies were responding to calls about "a distressed man who appeared possibly suicidal," wrote the Times.

The settlement "is an excellent resolution of the case that will benefit class members," said Kelly Dermody, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. "We look forward to presenting it to the court and making the terms available."

Lucasfilm, Intuit, and Pixar were also defendants in the original lawsuit, but those companies settled even before a class was formed. The companies will pay $20 million between them. Only 8 percent of the class members worked at those three companies.

The class agreeing to settle on Thursday consists of "all natural persons who work in the technical, creative, and/or research and development fields that are employed on a salaried basis in the United States by one or more of the following: (a) Apple from March 2005 through December 2009; (b) Adobe from May 2005 through December 2009; (c) Google from March 2005 through December 2009; (d) Intel from March 2005 through December 2009; (e) Intuit from June 2007 through December 2009; (f) Lucasfilm from January 2005 through December 2009; or (g) Pixar from January 2005 through December 2009."

Retail employees, senior executives, corporate officers, and board members are all excluded from the class.