What's This?
Image: Jose Sanchez/Associated Press
2015-03-25 23:14:30 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO — After four and a half weeks of courtroom drama, Ellen Pao's high-profile gender bias suit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was turned over to the jury for deliberations on Wednesday morning.
As soon as closing arguments were finished, the six men and six women of the jury — a diverse group that includes a painter, a subway station manager, a physical therapist and a prison nurse — were ushered into a secure room shuttered from the outside world to begin the unenviable task of sorting through mounds of evidence and reaching the requisite nine-person consensus.
At issue is whether or not Pao, a former junior partner at the famed firm, was discriminated against on the basis of her gender during her turbulent seven-year tenure, then retaliated against and ultimately fired when she complained about it.
The two heavyweight Bay Area law firms representing Pao have cast her as a promising venture capitalist whose trajectory to the upper echelon of the firm was cut short by Kleiner Perkins' deep-rooted and zealously guarded "boys club" culture.
Lynne Hermle, Kleiner Perkins' notoriously tough but charismatic defense lawyer, tried to turn that narrative on its head during her closing arguments, which started Tuesday and spilled into Wednesday morning. Ellen Pao is not the victim in this case, Hermle entreated the jury, Kleiner Perkins is.
"Think about the irony. Ellen has made the most public of claims, attacking [senior partner John Doerr] and his colleagues in a host of wrongdoing — fraudulent reviews, excluding women from events, giving her a prize-winning poetry book," Hermle said.
She’s made a determined, deliberate, sustained attack on Kleiner, and she made sure the press knew all about it."
Hermle was referring, in particular, to a statement Doerr posted on the Kleiner Perkins website after Pao filed her 2012 lawsuit in which he said her allegations were false. Pao's side has noted this statement as an instance of retaliation and argued the publicity hurt her job prospects when she eventually left the firm.
"It’s a sad day when John Doerr’s constitutionally protected expression of his views on the Kleiner Perkins website is cited to you as conduct that is vile and base," Hermle said.
In Hermle's account of the case, Doerr was a supportive mentor who constantly went out on a limb for Pao, but she spurned his and the other senior partners' support by publicly defaming the firm. Hermle argued that when Pao's performance reviews floundered, she "saw the writing on the wall" and concocted the lawsuit as a way to ensure a big "payout for team Ellen."
Hermle said that her current role as Reddit's interim CEO was a perfect fit for her, the type of management job she should have had years ago. Hermle argued the job proved that Kleiner Perkins partners were right when they suggested that she would be better off in an "operating role" than in investing, but Pao ignored them out of arrogance.
No matter the verdict, the much-watched trial has been a blow to the storied firm's reputation. The month of testimonies and unearthed emails and documents have aired much of the cloistered inner workings of the firm that has backed tech giants like Google and Amazon.
Pao's lawyer Therese Lawless followed Hermle with an impassioned rebuttal to cap off the closing arguments.
Lawless framed Pao's accusations within a broader context. She characterized Kleiner Perkins as stuck in its sexist ways, a remnant of an antiquated culture in which women were second-class citizens in the workplace.
"This type of behavior is no longer acceptable," Lawless said. "For many years, women were told you don’t have enough to own property, you don’t have enough to vote. No, you can’t be a surgeon, go take care of the kids. We got into law school — they told us 'No, you can't be a trial lawyer, go practice family law.'"
What really, really bothers me in this case is that some men think that they can decide what she’s best at and that’s what’s wrong. That is not tolerated anymore. It’s illegal."
The defense's focus on Pao's interpersonal issues was a bid to distract from the fact that she was a high-performer who drove profits at the firm, Lawless said. She pointed to a 2011 email in which Doerr, defending Pao from a negative performance review, wrote: "I don't know how a junior partner could have had a better year than Ellen did."
Lawless said she found it "disturbing" that realizing profits wouldn't be considered relevant criteria for job performance in the venture capital world.
"What is this world about? It’s not about a bunch of people sitting around and singing ‘Kumbaya.’"
Pao was seen as a threat to the firm's male-dominated culture, Lawless argued. When Pao asked to be included in meetings and events, the male partners saw it as presumptuous for a woman to make such requests, she said.
"They have their club, and they decide who can can be in and who can’t, and they decided that this woman who had worked so hard for the company, and they were going to determine her destiny?" Lawless said. "It’s not okay."
She ended the dramatic display by imploring the jury to consider the weight of their responsibility.
"Just remember when you go into that jury room, you are the conscience of this community," Lawless told the jury. "Let Kleiner Perkins, and the entire venture capital community, know that every employee who works hard deserves a fair and equitable workplace."
The jury must now suss the truth from these two wildly different stories, with millions of dollars hanging in the balance. Pao is seeking $16 million in lost wages, in addition to punitive damages that could amount to tens of millions more, but ultimately the jury will make the final call on the sum she is actually awarded.
But for many in Silicon Valley, the verdict is about much more than the money changing hands. The trial has become synonymous with larger issues surrounding sexism in the tech industry, where men far outnumber women. Experts say the verdict could set a far-reaching precedent for the way gender bias is handled in the tech world.
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Topics: Business, Ellen Pao, Kleiner Perkins
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