Ellen Pao Appealing Order to Pay Kleiner Perkins Trial Costs | Hacker News Reader

Ellen Pao Appealing Order to Pay Kleiner Perkins Trial Costs

bloomberg.com

20 pointsm_haggar11 comments

"Pao argued she should pay nothing because it would send the wrong message to employees trying to fight bias at the workplace."

Considering the jury found she wasn't in fact fighting bias, wouldn't paying costs send exactly the right message to people who cry wolf about bias?

That seems like a very uncharitable characterization. I haven't followed the lawsuit closely, but is it not possible she sincerely felt she was discriminated against when she filed the case? Surely you don't think everyone who loses a lawsuit was automatically "crying wolf" in the complaint, right?

The jury found that she was, in effect, crying wolf. The evidence against her claims of discrimination was overwhelming, to the point where the jury felt she should be responsible for KP's legal costs.

Loser pays is a system well-established in modern legal jurisprudence. Nearly every Western democracy, other than the United States, follows the "English" rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_%28attorney%27s_f...

Perhaps uncharitable, but her argument seems like grasping at straws. She's well educated, and had good representation, there's little likelihood she didn't know the risks going in.

Read about her husband's background, and you may perceive a pattern.

Well... it turns out that she feels a lot of things that aren't true.

Is that what the jury found, though? I thought that they failed to find evidence sufficient enough to show that KP was biased. Showing positive evidence that KP is not biased is a somewhat higher bar to clear, no?

Pretty much yes.

The only thing they had to find for the judge to accept their verdict was that she hadn't proven discrimination to 51% certainty. Proving the opposite wasn't required ... but they did anyway.

Based on the jury interviews afterwards, they came to the conclusion that she hadn't supported her case because the evidence was positive that she had been fired for performance.

They had gone over her claims and reviews of her performance and found that they would have fired her too (my summary, to be clear).

She's now expressing concern over the message having to pay costs would send. I'd suggest it sends exactly the right message, she just doesn't like hearing that message.

OK, makes sense.

The standard of proof was preponderance of evidence, meaning that Pao failed to prove that P(KP is biased) > P(KP is not biased), or, alternatively, that the jury found that P(KP is not biased) >= P(KP is biased).

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