Silicon valley gender lawsuit continues

Ellen Pao leaves the Civic Center Courthouse during a lunch break in her trial in February. Photo / AP.

Ellen Pao spent five days on the witness stand testifying how uncomfortable she was during seven years at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. She sought to tell jurors in a San Francisco courtroom why she filed her $16 million gender-bias lawsuit.

Kleiner lawyers, as defence attorneys typically do, tried to make the case less about the firm and more about her. While Pao spoke of an unwelcome gift of erotic poetry from a male Kleiner partner, the firm's lawyers zeroed in on a spreadsheet she made about her irritation with co-workers.

With more than a week to go before jurors consider a verdict in this case that's come to symbolise how women are treated in the tech hubs of Silicon Valley, the outcome will likely turn on the very simple concept of whether they believe Pao's claim she's a victim, or Kleiner's contention she's an opportunist.

Pao is asking the jury to find that she was subjected to a sexually charged atmosphere, preyed on by male colleagues and ultimately denied a promotion because she's a woman.

Kleiner denies discriminating or retaliating against Pao and claims her lawsuit was financially motivated. It says she was fired in 2012 because she was hard to get along with, had no experience as an entrepreneur and lacked expertise in strategic markets for investments.

Pao testified Thursday that in 2007 she built a spreadsheet detailing her irritation with partners at the firm. It included headings for "Person," "Resentment," "What Part of My Life is Affected," "My Feelings," and "My Part." She described her boss, managing partner John Doerr, as "tolerating incompetence" and a fellow junior partner as "wasting my time." Kleiner's lawyer dubbed it the "resentment chart."

That followed earlier testimony about the "Book of Longing" that a Kleiner partner gave her on Valentine's Day in 2007, which Pao said was followed by an invitation to dinner while his wife was out of town. Kleiner's lawyers pointed out that the book was a popular title by songwriter Leonard Cohen and said it had been ordered from Amazon.com by the partner's wife.

On Friday, when Pao finished her testimony with questions anonymously written by some of the six women and six men on the jury, she was asked why she endured at Kleiner so long.

"I'm an optimist," she said, saying she was counting on Doerr. "I was always hopeful that at some point John would step in and manage the culture or tell people to leave and clean it up."

She was also called on to explain why, having attending law school at Harvard University, she abandoned her career in corporate law after two years and returned to Harvard for a business degree. She said she didn't enjoy being a lawyer, and got a laugh from court spectators when she said decided to quit after a fellow lawyer told her he liked his job "because he never had to think twice about ordering a shrimp cocktail."

In their questions, the jurors probed Pao's judgment, motives and behavior, asking why she had asked her superiors not to fire the colleague with whom she had the 2006 affair, Ajit Nazre, after she found out he had lied to her about leaving his wife.

Pao claimed in earlier testimony that Nazre pressured her into having the affair and retaliated against her after she broke it off by cutting her out of the loop in dealing with several entrepreneurs with whom she was working.

On Friday she told the jurors she thought Nazre was "just very lost" and needed help and had promised "never to do it again."

She was also asked if it was "proper" to have an affair with a married man, even if he claimed he was separated from his wife.

She acknowledged the tryst was a mistake and said at the time she didn't realize how "extremely complicated and difficult" workplace relationships could be.

One juror asked Pao to reconcile her desire for "a supportive and nurturing environment for women" at Kleiner with the feuds she had with several co-workers.

"I didn't really want a supportive and nurturing environment," Pao said. "I wanted a fair environment."

She testified she didn't want to file a lawsuit but felt she had "no choice" after the firm's investigation found her complaints unfounded.

Nazre, who now works in India, said before the trial started that Kleiner has denied Pao's allegations about him and referred questions about the case to the firm. He isn't a defendant in the case.

Nazre was fired in 2012 after the firm's investigation found he harassed another female partner, Trae Vassallo. She complained that Nazre showed up at her New York hotel room one night on a 2011 business trip in his bathrobe asking to come in. She also testified about an unwanted sexual advance by Nazre in 2009.