March 27, 2015

Ellen Pao Loses Her Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Against Silicon Valley VC Firm Kleiner Perkins

One juror flipped his vote on the hung count, putting an end to the closely-watched Silicon Valley trial.

Ellen Pao near the courthouse where her lawsuit has been on trial since February. Eric Risberg/AP

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This is a breaking news story. We’ll be updating this post regularly.

Ellen Pao’s $16 million lawsuit against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, has captivated Silicon Valley for the past month. Pao, now the interim CEO of Reddit, sued her former employer on charges of gender discrimination and retaliation. Many have called the trial Silicon Valley’s version of the Anita Hill hearings, in part because it offers a rare glimpse into the challenges faced by women at the Valley’s elite companies, where cases of this rank usually settle rather than go public. At 2 PM pacific today, the jury returned a verdict, voting no on all four counts of alleged gender discrimination and retaliation by Kleiner Perkins.

But the official verdict barely lasted a half hour, thanks to an error in basic math: The judge asked each juror to list their individual verdict for the court. This revealed that on the fourth count—which alleges that Pao’s termination was retaliation for raising concerns about gender discrimination and filing her lawsuit—4 of the 12 jurors, two men and two women, voted yes. The judge ruled that 8-4 was an insufficient majority—a consensus among nine jurors is needed—and asked the jurors to return to the deliberation room for further discussion. That means that there hasn’t yet been an official verdict. We’ll keep updating this post as news unfolds.

Update, Friday, 7:45 p.m. EDT: After the first jury miscount, an official verdict is in and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins has prevailed on all counts. The jury returned to the courtroom after several hours of additional deliberations to deliver the verdict. Juror 3, one of the four original “yes” votes on the retaliation count, flipped his vote. With a consensus of nine jurors or more on all counts, the case is over. Ellen Pao gave a brief statement to the press, thanking her family and friends for their support throughout the trial. “I have told my story and thousands of people have heard me,” she said. “If I’ve helped level the playing field for women and minorities in venture capital, then the battle was worth it.”

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