In what could be the first settlement of its kind, Duke University has agreed to pay $54.5 million to resolve a class action over an alleged illegal employee-poaching agreement with the University of North Carolina after the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the antitrust case.
The proposed settlement, filed Monday, comes the same day that the DOJ filed a motion to intervene in the class action in order to enforce injunctive relief that would prohibit Duke and UNC from signing “no-poach” employee agreements during the next five years. The case is one of several in which the DOJ has filed statements of interest seeking to clarify the standard of review that judges should use in evaluating whether an agreement violates the federal antitrust law, the Sherman Antitrust Act.
