A US Judge has smited an attempt
Shaun, we have so few strong verbs left in English; why not use its strong participle? A US judge has smitten an attempt better preserves that sense of just deserts.
A US Judge has smited an attempt by Apple, Intel, Adobe and Google to settle their wage-fixing case with former employees. Judge Lucy Koh ruled Friday that the $324.5m settlement deal the firms had negotiated with the plaintiffs' attorneys does not adequately compensate their ex-workers. The former employees claimed that the …
Steve, smote is a preterite (for the past tense), not a past participle (for the perfect aspect). Compare smite with write, its closest surviving kin in modern English from the Type I Germanic verbs; wrote is the preterite, written is the past participle. Your example is correct for a past tense statement, but has smitten (or has smited, if one must) would be needed for a statement in the present perfect.
Hell yes jack up the punitive damages as these are some of the biggest companies in the world. Send a very clear message that free market capitalism as opposed to crony capitalism (what we really have in the US) requires a free and transparent market for labor as well as goods.
Can we all get in on this, my company pays at market rates (so they say....) if these companies kept salaries lower than they should have been then has everyone in my company been affected.
Most companies have a market rate pay policy so the number of people this could have affected is crazy.