Ellen Pao will have to pay her former employer, Kleiner Perkins, $275,966.63 toward legal costs incurred during her gender-discrimination lawsuit against the venture capital firm, according to a ruling issued today in San Francisco Superior Court. Kleiner Perkins, which in March was found not liable for Pao's claims of gender discrimination, was seeking to recover nearly triple that amount.
In late April, Kleiner offered to waive roughly $1 million in legal fees if Pao agreed not to appeal her high-profile case. In post-trial interviews, Pao emphasized that she wanted get back to work as the interim CEO of Reddit. So it came as a surprise to some when Pao announced plans to appeal, flouting the $1 million deal. At the time, Recode reported that Pao's appeal was probably more of "a play for leverage in the ongoing fight over who will pay for millions of dollars in court costs."
The acrimony has only intensified since then. In a court filing earlier this month, Kleiner Perkins revealed that after the trial, Pao asked for $2.7 million in legal fees in order to not appeal. Pao's attorneys immediately countered that Kleiner was widely publicizing "a confidential post-trial discussion" to the press "in a negative light."
At issue in today's hearing — the first time both sides are back in court since the March 27 verdict — was the cost of Kleiner's expert witnesses, a recurring theme during and after the trial. In a May filing, Pao's legal team described Kleiner's nearly $1 million in court costs as "grossly excessive and unreasonable."
Today's court decision is in line with a tentative ruling released yesterday by Judge Harold Kahn. He granted in part and denied in part Pao's motion to strike any unreasonable costs. Judge Kahn said Kleiner's April offer of $1 million was made in "good faith" and had a "reasonable prospect of acceptance."
Kahn said California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, the statue Pao used to bring her claim, called for scaling the expert witness fees depending on the economic resources of competing parties. According to CNET, the judge argued Pao was ordered to pay a similar amount to what she paid for her own expert witnesses. "I think I got the right ballpark," he said in court. "Want to contest jury food?"
#EllenPao's lawyer says $276K bill could discourage future FEHA cases. Judge says unlike Pao, most FEHA plaintiffs aren't interim CEOs.
Most suing for discrimination "don't have carried interest & aren't interim CEOs," judge says in hearing on how much Ellen Pao should pay.
Pao was suing for $16 million in damages for not being promoted to senior partner. Testimony from the trial showed that if Pao had been promoted, her salary might have quintupled to close to $3 million, commensurate with the salaries of men who made it to the senior level at the firm.
In the face of renewed scrutiny about the issue of who should shoulder the cost of the trial, both sides have continued to try to steer public perception. Pao took the stage at Recode's Code Conference in May and at a 500 Startup's conference last week, where she played the part of a thinkfluencer (a prerequisite for promotion at Kleiner), opining that half of all venture capitalists should be women.
Meanwhile, today, billionaire investor and Kleiner partner John Doerr — Pao's onetime mentor and father figure — sat down with Bloomberg's Emily Chang and discussed the case, saying Pao's claims "had no merit."
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Doerr also emphasized the impossibility of reaching a settlement with Pao before or after the trial, alluding to some stubbornness on her part that he never fully spelled out. "I've always believed that this matter ought to be resolved outside the courts — believe me — and it just wasn't possible," he said. When Chang pressed him on paying Pao the $2.7 million and walking away, he said, "If it were that easy, it would have been done. I will just tell you it's not possible."
Bloomberg's exclusive interview with Kleiner partners also included general partner Dr. Beth Seidenberg, who was awkwardly positioned next to Doerr on the couch and tried to help out during the settlement questions, telling Chang that Kleiner tried "very hard" to settle. Both Seidenberg and fellow Kleiner partner Mary Meeker were often held up by the firm's lawyer, Lynne Hermle, as proof that women could advance at the firm. However, both women joined the firm after already establishing their expertise. On the stand, both women said they weren't held back from becoming managing members (the most powerful title at Kleiner) — they just weren't interested.
Doerr denied the idea that paying Pao $2.7 million would be an admission of guilt. "I'm sorry this happened to Ellen, that it happened to us, it happened to the tech industry. This isn't a question of guilt, it's a civil case, so the question is liability. The jury found that we're not liable after five and a half weeks of testimony."
Below, Kahn's ruling in full.
