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Ellen Pao, former junior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, exits state court in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, March 25, 2015. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Ellen Pao, former junior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, exits state court in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, March 25, 2015. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The verdict is in.
A six-man, six-woman jury has decided that one-time partner Ellen Pao was not discriminated against by her former employer, storied venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Byers & Caufield, because of her gender. The jury also found that Kleiner did not retaliate against her for complaining about bias at the firm by denying her promotions. The jury also found that Kleiner did not retaliate against her for complaining about bias at the firm by denying her promotions.
Initially, the jury also said it found that Kleiner did not retaliate against Pao by firing her. But in a poll of individual jurors by Judge Harold Kahn found that only eight jurors had voted ‘no.’ Nine votes are required to reach a final verdict.
As a result of the miscount, the judge sent jurors back to deliberate further.
The jury delivered its decision after deliberating since Wednesday in an isolated, windowless room in San Francisco Superior Court. The high-profile sex bias trial that has engrossed Silicon Valley over the past month and convulsed the larger tech industry, where women are still a distinct minority.
The jurors parsed twenty-one days of testimony to come to their decision.
Pao’s suit consisted of four separate but related allegations. She accused Kleiner Perkins of discriminating against her based on her gender and said the firm retaliated against her after she complained. Kleiner Perkins failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent that discrimination, she said, and instead retaliated by firing her.
Throughout the trial, which began more than a month ago, Pao’s attorneys sought to show that the legendary venture capital firm fostered a biased, male-dominated climate where women were passed over, put down, and ignored. Kleiner’s defense team, meanwhile, tried to show that Pao herself wasn’t up to the job, and that her termination had nothing to do with her gender.
Regardless of the verdict, the fact that the case came to trial at all was a kind of loss for Kleiner. In Silicon Valley, companies and venture capital firms craft careful public relations strategies to protect their images. But no PR spin could hide the gossip-ridden world of office politics and intrigue at the firm that emerged during weeks of testimony. Whether, for example, a private jet flight included lewd talk of the Playboy Mansion and Victoria’s Secret models or not, the fact that such a question came up at all is a far cry from the picture of progressive, innovative “thought leaders” VC firms seek to project.
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