It’s happy 25th anniversary to somebody today, but not to you if you’re an investor, a consumer, or an employee who toils outside of the executive suite. On June 8, 1987, the Supreme Court said it was OK for brokerage firms to require customers to give up their rights to court in the event that a broker ripped them off. Instead of open court with public records and annoying reporters who could chronicle the sordid details of abuse of the little guy, investors since then have been stuck in “mandatory arbitration” that’s run by — guess who? — the brokerage industry. Continue reading
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Could Silicon Valley Sex Discrimination Case Get Kicked Out of Court?
Sex discrimination isn’t the iPad, folks. It’s more like
the electric typewriter.
When you see the words “tech” or “venture capital,” you think of brilliant geeks coming up with cool new stuff you’d never heard of before, right? Well tech types are in the 1980s when it comes to sex discrimination cases. Ellen Pao, who sued the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers last month, is claiming that the guys she worked with excluded her from meetings and held fancy dinners with big clients and left the women out. One of her partners said it would “kill the buzz” to have women at one power dinner, according to her suit. We didn’t fix that leaving-the-girls-out thing a couple decades ago?
Kleiner has said the suit is “without merit,” and its star general partner, John Doerr, said in a letter posted on the firm’s website on May 30 that it all amounted to “false allegations against his firm, which boasts “the most” women of any leading venture capital firm. As luck would have it, Kleiner’s woman numbers rose by one the next day, when the firm announced a new partner to focus on investments in consumer internet business, Megan Quinn, would begin in late June.
We’ll see if Pao can even get to court. Kleiner spokeswoman Amanda Duckworth told me in an email that the firm believes Pao’s claims “are covered by an arbitration agreement.” Alan Exelrod, Pao’s lawyer, declined to comment when I asked him if she’d signed anything obligating her to arbitration. Kleiner hasn’t filed any request to have the complaint kicked out of court, but companies in employment disputes usually love the idea of getting a case out of the public eye. Here’s my Bloomberg column on the Pao case and its striking resemblance to lawsuits 20 years past. Read article
Hacking Obama’s JOBS Act?
For the moment, though, the law’s approval of something called “crowdfunding” looks like the most toxic of all.
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I recently appeared on Bloomberg Radio to discuss my article “Ex-Con Man Says JOBS Law Makes Guys Like Him Rich.” Download audio file.
‘Moral Reminders’ Could Help Fix Wall Street
“What’s interesting about the economic crisis is that it’s not just cheating — it’s cheating with a religious belief.”
A Duke University prof explains why and how we lie, and how we might clean things up. Meet Professor Dan Ariely in my column today: Read article