![]() Ramsey admitted she was ending the trial feeling rather emotional about it. Marshalette Ramsey, an African-American woman who works as a BART manager, voted “yes” on all of Pao’s claims. “We never talked about who was waiting for us or what it was going to do to the venture capital world in general,” he said. When asked whether there was much talk among the jurors about the broader significance of the case for the venture capital world, Sammut said there was none. He admitted that he thought Hermle was a stronger lawyer, than Alan Exelrod or Therese Lawless, Pao’s attorneys, especially during cross-examination. In Pao’s case, he said, the areas for improvement stayed the same, whereas remarks for other Kleiner employees tended to change. Pao had sought $16 million in compensatory damages, a figure that could have been much higher if the jury had found in her favor and also decided to award punitive damages.Īccording to Sammut, what really stuck out for him was the performance reviews they looked at. If she did seek an appeal, he said, it would more likely be on grounds such as the judge's instructions to the jury on how to define gender discrimination. Schiller said he doubted that Pao's team would seek to exploit the jury's miscount alone as grounds for a mistrial. "You’re going to particularly get into trouble in the situaion the tech community is in right now, that there are so few women employees." "If you don’t have, frankly, more traditional ways of managing your human resources, you’re going to get into trouble," Schiller said. Kleiner acknowledged during the case, for example, that it was unable to locate a written copy of its equal opportunity employment policy after it brought in an outside investigator to look into Pao's complaints of gender bias at the firm. Whatever the jury's decision, the case has exposed the vulnerabilities of Silicon Valley's lax approach to human resources, said Reuel Schiller, professor of labor and employment law at UC Hastings. “That will serve to focus people’s attention on them, and the need to focus on them in the workplace,” she ways. That they’re being seen as evidence of gender bias, rather than “micro-aggressions” in an extensive gender discrimination lawsuit is a positive sign we’re making progress, according to Williams. “That said, this case remains a game changer, even if she lost,” Williams says.įor one, some of the incidents presented in the suit and recounted during witness testimony were in line with patterns of subtle bias against women, Williams pointed out, including being asked to take notes at a meeting, walking the tightrope between being seen as “too passive” and “too harsh,” and being denied opportunities because of her pregnancy. ![]() If Pao had won the case, Williams believes, the trial would have much deeper reverberations in the industry. “It’s easier to assess that, if after Pao complained, Kleiner would turn against her-with comments like ‘she had a female chip on her shoulder.’” “There was a lot of conflicting evidence and a lot of it came down to who you believe, and judgement,” she says. After more than an hour, the jury returned and was polled again, and the final vote on the fourth claim was 9-3.Īccording to Williams, it’s widely known that it is easier to prove retaliation, and more difficult to prove than discrimination. Nine votes are required to reach a final verdict.Īs a result, the judge sent jurors back to deliberate further. In a bizarre legal hiccup, the jury returned to the courtroom earlier this afternoon saying it had reached a verdict and found against Pao on all four of her claims.īut a poll of individual jurors by Judge Harold Kahn determined that only eight had voted 'no' on Pao's fourth claim-that Kleiner had retaliated against Pao for complaining about gender bias at the firm by firing her. The jurors parsed twenty-one days of testimony to come to their decision. Kleiner Perkins failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent that discrimination, she said, and instead retaliated by firing her. She accused Kleiner Perkins of discriminating against her based on her gender and said the firm retaliated against her after she complained. ![]() Pao's suit consisted of four separate but related allegations.
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