SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers is seeking to recover about $973,000 in costs from a high profile gender discrimination trial that captivated Silicon Valley, according to a court filing on Thursday. 
 
 Ellen Pao leaves San Francisco Superior Court Civic Center Courthouse during a lunch break in San Francisco, California March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam 
 
 A jury cleared Kleiner Perkins in March of claims it short-circuited former partner Ellen Pao’s career because she is a woman. The trial helped spark a wide discussion about gender at the center of the U.S. technology industry. 
 
 Kleiner has offered to waive its legal costs should Pao choose not to appeal, according to firm spokeswoman Christina Lee. Kleiner’s costs request includes about $865,000 in expert witness fees, the court filing said. 
 
 “We believe that women in technology would be best served by having all parties focus on making progress on the issues of gender diversity outside of continued litigation,” Lee said in a statement. 
 
 Pao and her legal team are considering the proposal, said Heather Wilson, a spokeswoman for Pao. 
 
 Pao, now interim chief executive at social-news service Reddit, claimed her standing at Kleiner Perkins crumbled after she ended a brief affair with a partner. Her career deteriorated after he and Kleiner Perkins started retaliating against her in a climate that was overall unfriendly toward women, her lawyers argued. 
 
 After the verdict, three jurors told Reuters they had focused on Pao’s increasingly negative performance reviews, which undermined her argument that she deserved to be promoted. 
 
 Kleiner’s offer to withdraw its costs request in exchange for an end to the case, is common when defendants prevail in employment lawsuits. Should Pao decide to pursue an appeal, her case would be heard by California’s First District Court of Appeal. 
 
 According to Westlaw data, out of 49 decisions involving discrimination and retaliation over the past two years, the First District affirmed 26 of 31 cases where the employer won in the trial court, or 84 percent. Only five cases were reversed. 
 
 Meanwhile the court, which covers San Francisco and 11 other Northern California counties, handed victory to employers in more than half of the cases they lost in the lower courts, reversing 10 of 18 cases. ||||| SAN FRANCISCO — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm, is offering a new deal to the former associate who unsuccessfully sued the firm, accusing it of gender discrimination: Promise not to pursue this case any further or pay us $1 million. 
 
 The offer was made in papers filed this week in California Superior Court in San Francisco. The firm said the case, which drew an abundance of unfavorable attention to its inner workings and the fate of women in Silicon Valley, cost it $972,815 in witness fees, deposition and court reporter costs. 
 
 As the winning party, Kleiner is asking the former associate, Ellen Pao, to reimburse it for these bills. But if she forgoes any appeal and lets the case die, the firm will forgive and forget, or at least move on. 
 
 “We believe that women in technology would be best served by having all parties focus on making progress on the issues of gender diversity outside of continued litigation,” said Christina Lee, a Kleiner spokeswoman. 
 
 A jury at the end of March rejected all of Ms. Pao’s claims. Legal fees, which must have been considerable on both sides, are not on the table. 
 
 Ms. Pao’s chief lawyer, Alan Exelrod, did not return a call for comment. Ms. Pao has not said whether she will pursue an appeal, and the grounds on which she would do so are uncertain. 
 
 The judge in the case, Harold Kahn, made no obvious rulings that seemed to favor the defense. If anything, the opposite was true. He declined to allow testimony about Ms. Pao’s husband, Alphonse Fletcher Jr., whose hedge fund is bankrupt. 
 
 Debra S. Katz, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who specializes in gender discrimination suits, said Kleiner sounded a little punitive. 
 
 “If Kleiner wanted to look classy, it could have said, ‘This was hard fought and we obviously disagree with your view, but it’s in the interest of all parties to walk away. In the meantime, there have been lessons learned and we are going to fund organizations that focus on glass ceiling issues,’ ” Ms. Katz said. 
 
 The vast majority of the fees Kleiner is trying to recover are for witnesses. The fees for Paul Gompers, a professor at Harvard Business School, were $92,700, the filing says. 
 
 Other court filings revealed that last November, Kleiner had offered Ms. Pao $964,502 to settle, an amount based on the projected costs of the case. 
 
 By making that offer, Kleiner can now ask for witness fees, which unlike deposition fees are not normally recoverable. Ms. Pao never responded, although she might wish she had. ||||| Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers filed legal paperwork Wednesday seeking $972,814 in legal costs from Ellen Pao, the former partner who recently lost a high-profile sex-discrimination case against the firm. 
 
 In its filing, Kleiner also revealed it offered to settle the case with Pao before it went to trial, offering her almost $1 million, but it said Pao’s lawyers didn’t respond. 
 
 Kleiner Perkins said it would waive its attempt to recover legal costs from Pao if she agrees not to pursue an appeal in her gender discrimination case against the firm. 
 
 A Pao spokeswoman said her legal team is “considering the proposal,” and will respond in the next two weeks. The spokeswoman said the team will respond at the same time to Kleiner’s claim that it attempted to settle the case but that Pao’s team never responded.
– Even though Ellen Pao lost her gender-discrimination suit against a former employer, she's still widely hailed as a hero for bringing the boys' club atmosphere of Silicon Valley under a microscope. But now she's got a tough choice on her hands: The venture-capital firm she sued, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says she owes almost $1 million in legal fees—but it will drop its pursuit of the money if she doesn't appeal last month's ruling, reports the Wall Street Journal. Pao's attorneys say they will have a decision in a few weeks. Kleiner Perkins says it offered Pao about $1 million as a settlement before the trial began, but received no response from her legal team. Because of that offer, the company can now go after Pao for expensive witness fees, explains the New York Times. One factor that will surely weigh on the decision: A review of previous cases suggests that Pao has only a slim chance of winning on appeal, reports Reuters.