Los Angeles Sexual Assault Lawyer Blog

Large technological firms, particularly those in Silicon Valley, have long been described as "boys' clubs," where gender discrimination has prevented women from advancing far in their field.

This was further underscored when Marissa Mayer was named Yahoo's new CEO, which several media outlets colored as being a monumental crack in that notorious glass ceiling.

Now, a lawsuit filed against a prominent California firm alleges not only gender bias but also sexual harassment at one of those firms against a Harvard-educated female employee.

While the details so far revealed about this case make it particularly interesting, our Los Angeles Sexual Assault Lawyers know that the basic principal remains the same: Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act bars companies from engaging in discrimination based on gender, and sexual harassment is illegal under both state and federal statutes.

This case involves Caulfied & Byers, a billion-dollar investment firm that made its money investing in companies such as Amazon and Google. Senior partners in the firm include such high-profile figures as Colin Powell and Al Gore. They, however, are not at the center of this controversy.

A junior partner at the firm, a 42-year-old woman who has worked there for seven years, alleges that she and other females at the firm were blocked from advancement opportunities and promotions in order to award those posts to male members. She further contends that she personally suffered sexual harassment by at least two different employees, and that a pervasive culture of sexually offensiveness created a hostile work environment for her and other female workers.

She continues to work at the firm while litigation is ongoing, and the company has called her accusations baseless. While the company maintains that a quarter of its senior partners are in fact female, that wasn't the case for much of the firm's history, dating back more than three decades.

The complainant, who has undergraduate degree from Princeton and a law degree and masters of business administration degree from Harvard, said she was hired in 2005 as a junior partner and told she could advance within three years if she performed well in her post.

But early on in her position, she reportedly engaged a handful of times in consensual sexual relations with another junior partner at the firm, who was married. She said when she broke it off, he harassed her for the next five years. That harassment reportedly included leaving her off of important e-mail correspondence and withholding from her certain critical information that would have been vital to her success at the firm.

She said she complained to her supervisors, but nothing was done, and in fact, her supervisors began to exclude her as well. She says one even suggested that she marry her harasser. There were private business trips and dinner parties that she contends she was purposely excluded from. Regarding one dinner party, she was told that they were solely for the men at the firm because women were a "buzz kill."

While her alleged harasser was promoted, she never advanced.

Then in 2007, she says another senior partner on Valentine's Day sent her a book of pictures and poems that contained sexually explicit content. The firm counters in court records that the gift, which was actually from the partner's wife, was misunderstood.

The woman's lawsuit does not contend that the sexual relationship she had with the other junior partner was anything but consensual (not a Quid Pro Quo situation). However, a relationship with a co-worker, while perhaps professionally inadvisable, does not open the doors for an allowable level of sexual harassment in the office.

The case is currently in a phase of private arbitration.