The venture capital firm had asked for $1 million. Meanwhile, both sides are fighting the battle for public opinion.
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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 the 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 offer. 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 legals fees in order not to 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 27th 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 competiting 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?"
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