Samsung, LG are going to court as defendants over an alleged anti-poaching agreement

By Christian de Looper Published September 12, 2016

Samsung is being dragged to court once again, but this time, it’s not going up against a large tech company but rather going to court alongside a competitor — LG. The two companies are accused of agreeing to an anti-poaching arrangement in the U.S., according to a civil lawsuit filed last week.

The lawsuit suggests the two companies agreed not to poach each other’s U.S. employees and was first filed by an LG sales manager in northern California.

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Neither Samsung nor LG has made any comment on the case, but the evidence against them appears to be mounting. According to the plaintiff, A. Frost, a recruiter reached out to him via LinkedIn in 2013, asking him to consider filling a position at Samsung. That recruiter then followed up with another message the same day.

“I made a mistake! I’m not supposed to poach LG for Samsung!!! Sorry! The two companies have an agreement that they won’t steal each other’s employees,” the message said, according to a report from Reuters.

The lawsuit goes on to say that it is “implausible” that such an agreement was made between the two companies without the knowledge of their corporate parents in South Korea. A specific amount of damages was not stated in the suit.

Of course, the lawsuit might remind you of a similar one that was filed against Apple, Google, and a number of other large tech companies last year that was eventually settled for $415 million. According to the plaintiffs, this anti-poaching agreement was made in an effort to keep wages relatively low, and centers around emails sent from Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs to Google executive Eric Schmidt, which said that Google was “relentlessly recruiting” from Apple’s iPod team, and asked for the poaching to stop.

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Christian de Looper

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Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

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