A class action lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against various shipbuilders that have built military vessels, various specialized consulting firms that helped design, refit, and maintain ships in the U.S. fleet, and a recruiting firm that recruited naval engineers, that alleges, among other things, that executives in charge of hiring at various companies in the naval engineering industry maintained an illegal “gentlemen’s agreement” not to actively recruit, or “poach” each other’s naval architects and/or marine engineers, in violation of antitrust laws.

According to an antitrust class action complaint, the alleged no-poach “gentlemen’s agreement” allegedly suppressed wages for naval architects and marine engineers below those that would have existed in a competitive market and deprived these professionals of hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.

Impacted professionals include naval architects and marine engineers who were employed at any time after January 1, 2000, by various shipbuilders and specialized consulting firms in the industry, including:

• General Dynamics Corporation
• Bath Iron Works Corporation
• Electric Boat Corporation
• General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc.
• Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.
• Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company
• Ingalls Shipbuilding, Inc.
• HII Fleet Support Group LLC (f/k/a AMSEC LLC)
• Rosenblatt & Son, Inc.
• HII Mission Technologies Corp.
• Alion Science and Technology Corporation
• John J. McMullen & Associates
• Marinette Marine Corporation
• Bollinger Shipyards, LLC
• Gibbs & Cox, Inc.
• Serco, Inc.
• Technology Financing Inc.
• CACI International Inc.
• Computer Sciences Corporation
• CSC Advanced Marine Center
• The Columbia Group, Inc.
• Columbia Research Corporation
• Thor Solutions LLC
• Tridentis, LLC
• BMT Designers & Planners, Inc.
• NASSCO Holdings Incorporated
• Austal USA LLC
• BAE Systems Ship Repair Inc.

Public fleet naval architects and marine engineers (collectively, “naval engineers”) design and build the U.S.’s warships and other “public fleet” vessels. While some naval engineers work directly for the federal government, most naval engineers are employed by a group of private contractors (about 40% of naval engineers work for shipbuilders) and consulting firms (about 40% work for engineering consultancies) who are hired by the Navy, the Coast Guard, and other federal and state entities.

Naval architects are responsible for naval vessels’ design, including the form, structure, performance and stability of hulls. Naval architects have specialized knowledge of hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, vessel motion physics, mechanics, strength of materials, and design of structures.

Marine engineers (also known as marine design engineers, marine mechanical engineers, specialized electrical engineers, HVAC engineers, and structural engineers) design onboard ship systems, including those related to propulsion mechanics, power generation, heating, air conditioning, ventilation, water distillation and purification, cargo handling, steering, and fuel.

If you worked as a naval architect or marine engineer for any of the companies listed above at any time after January 1, 2000, you may have been underpaid and may be entitled to recover financial damages as well as potentially a court approved service award, if appropriate, at no cost to you.

More Information About The Case:

The Complaint:

Class Period and Key Allegations in the Complaint

Class Period

The Complaint defines the Class Period as:

January 1, 2000, to the present (or until Defendants’ unlawful conduct ceases).

The proposed class consists of:

All naval architects and marine engineers employed in the United States by Defendants (excluding Faststream Recruitment Ltd.), their subsidiaries, predecessors, or related entities during that period.

Relevant Market

The alleged relevant labor market is:

• The U.S. naval design and shipbuilding industry
• Specifically the labor market for naval architects and marine engineers
• Approximately 10,000 such engineers employed industry-wide
• Defendants allegedly control ~75% of that labor market

Defendants include:

• Major shipbuilders (General Dynamics entities, Huntington Ingalls entities, Marinette Marine, Bollinger)
• Naval engineering consultancies (Gibbs & Cox, Serco/JJMA, CACI/CSC, Columbia Group/M. Rosenblatt, BMT, Thor Solutions, Tridentis)
• Recruiter Faststream (allegedly facilitating compliance and information exchange)

Core Allegation: Industry-Wide “Gentlemen’s Agreement”

The central allegation is a long-running horizontal no-poach conspiracy.

Alleged Agreement

Beginning no later than 2000 (and possibly earlier), Defendants allegedly:

• Entered into an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement”
• Agreed not to actively recruit or “poach” each other’s naval engineers
• In some cases maintained “do not hire” lists
• Allowed hiring only if the employee independently initiated contact

Plaintiffs allege:

• The industry has persistent shortages of qualified naval engineers
• In a competitive labor market, that shortage should drive up wages
• Instead, wages remained suppressed
• Naval engineers were deprived of “hundreds of millions of dollars” in compensation

The theory is a per se unlawful horizontal restraint of trade under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Enforcement and Concealment

The Complaint alleges:

• Monitoring and enforcement through inter-firm communications
• Information sharing directly and through recruiters (including Faststream)
• Retaliation or reputational consequences for violators
• Use of limited written “teaming agreement” non-solicitation clauses to conceal the broader unwritten industry-wide agreement

Fraudulent Concealment Allegations

To avoid the four-year statute of limitations, Plaintiffs allege:

• The conspiracy was intentionally concealed
• It was unwritten and coded in language (“friends,” “relationship”)
• Engineers had no reason to suspect suppressed wages
• Plaintiffs could not reasonably discover the conspiracy earlier

Key Holdings in the Court’s November 2025 Opinion (Post-Remand)

This Order addresses the Rule 12(b)(6) motions after remand from the Fourth Circuit.

The Court held:

• Plaintiff plausibly alleged a Section 1 conspiracy.
• Although no “smoking gun” was alleged, direct evidence is rare in antitrust cases.
• Confidential witness allegations were sufficiently particularized at the pleading stage.
• The alleged industry-wide no-poach agreement plausibly exceeded mere “conscious parallelism.”

The Court emphasized:

• At the motion-to-dismiss stage, factual allegations must be accepted as true.
• The alleged uniform no-recruitment practices, coupled with witness testimony and industry structure, plausibly suggest agreement.

Plus Factors Adequately Alleged

The Court found that Plaintiff sufficiently alleged:

• Motive to conspire (wage suppression in concentrated labor market)
• Opportunity to conspire (close geographic and professional ties)
• High inter-firm communications
• Conduct arguably against unilateral economic self-interest

These “plus factors” supported plausibility beyond parallel conduct.

Participation of Individual Defendants

Seven defendants argued insufficient participation allegations.

The Court rejected those arguments at the pleading stage, holding that:

• Plaintiffs plausibly tied each Defendant to the alleged agreement.
• Detailed proof of participation is not required at this stage.
• Specific timing of each Defendant’s entry into the conspiracy is not required at the 12(b)(6) stage.

The Court:

• Denied the remaining Joint Motion to Dismiss
• Denied the Individual Motions to Dismiss
• Allowed the case to proceed

Settlements to date:

Fast stream, a third-party vendor of compensation data, for cooperation that entail producing their documents despite a good argument that they did not have to because their US entity was bankrupt.

Gibbs & Cox, a prominent consultancy business, settled for $2.5 million, documents, depositions, and meaningful cooperation.

If you would like to learn more about this matter, you are encouraged to contact us at jgrabar@grabarlaw.com, or call 267-507-6085.