Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe Systems have settled a class-action lawsuit alleging they conspired to prevent their engineers and other highly sought technology workers from getting better job offers from one another. The agreement was announced Thursday preventing a Silicon Valley trial that threatened to expose the tactics deployed by billionaire executives such as late Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs and former Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt. The trial had been scheduled to begin May 27 in San Jose, California.

“Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared ‘verbally, since I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?’” he said, according to a court filing. The HR director agreed.

Rich Gray, a Silicon Valley antitrust expert said the companies rather avoid trial because their executives’ emails that they have shared would make them look really bad to a jury. The workers’ lawsuit, which grew out of an earlier Justice Department investigation, was seeking $3 billion in damages on behalf of 64,600 workers employed at some point from 2005 through 2009. Had damages been awarded in trial, they could have been tripled under antitrust laws forbidding U.S. companies from engaging in behavior that suppresses a free market. The companies argued that the employees should not be allowed to sue as a group.

Trial is scheduled to begin at the end of May on behalf of around 64,000 workers. Spokespeople for Apple, Google and Intel had no comment. An Adobe representative said that the company denies it engaged in any wrongdoing, but settled “in order to avoid the uncertainties, cost and distraction of litigation.”