By Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, June 18 (Reuters) - U.S. defense contractor General Dynamics GD.N has asked a judge to award it some of the tens of millions of dollars in legal fees it said it incurred defending against a lawsuit alleging it conspired for years with rival manufacturers to suppress wages for engineers and other employees.

In a court filing on Wednesday, General Dynamics told a federal judge in Virginia that lawyers for the plaintiffs “never had a shred of evidence” it was part of the alleged scheme.

The plaintiffs abandoned their claims against General Dynamics in federal court in Alexandria with prejudice last month, meaning they cannot be refiled. Last week, shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls HII.N said it would pay $2.7 million to resolve related claims in the lawsuit. The defendants have all denied wrongdoing in the case.

General Dynamics did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lead attorneys for the plaintiffs at Cohen Milstein, Hagens Berman and other firms said they will oppose the fee bid. Huntington had no immediate comment.

The class action lawsuit was filed in 2023 by two naval architects who alleged the shipbuilders, since at least 2000, had agreed not to recruit their rivals’ engineers, restricting workers' mobility and costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost compensation.

A judge in December allowed the lawsuit to advance against General Dynamics and the other defendants after a federal appeals court revived the case. The proposed class included thousands of engineers.

General Dynamics, in its new court filing, said routine non‑solicitation employment arrangements were part of lawful “teaming agreements” that are used to jointly design and build ships for the U.S. Navy.

The company contends it should be paid fees from November 2025, when it says the plaintiffs had evidence undermining their claims but continued litigating for months, and that the plaintiffs' lawyers should be held personally liable.

The case is Scharpf v. General Dynamics, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, No. 1:23-cv-01372.

For plaintiffs: Steven Toll and Brent Johnson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; Shana Scarlett of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro; and George Farah of Handley Farah & Anderson

For General Dynamics: David Barger of Greenberg Traurig

For Huntington Ingalls: Adam Schwartz of A&O Shearman; Sima Namiri-Kalantari and Chahira Solh of Crowell & Moring