Judge Torres’ Order also agrees with plaintiffs on multiple evidentiary and expert testimony issues

On March 17, 2022, District Court Judge Analisa Torres issued an Order in the ongoing Goldman Sachs gender discrimination case (originally filed in 2010) with significant positive ramifications for the plaintiffs and the Class. Most significantly:

First, Judge Torres denied the defendants’ motion to decertify the case. The case proceeds on behalf of nearly 2,000 female Associates and Vice-Presidents in revenue-producing divisions who have worked at Goldman Sachs in New York City since 2002, and in the rest of the country since 2004.

Second, the Court rejected almost all of Goldman Sachs’ attempts to narrow the case, confirming that there will be a trial on gender discrimination in Goldman’s promotion practices (from Vice-President to Managing Director), forced ranking (“manager quartiling”), and 360 review process, as well as on the claim that gender discrimination was Goldman’s standard operating procedure.

Third, the Court rejected Goldman’s attempts to separate and carve out pieces of the company’s personnel practices that are inseparable parts of a whole, which if permitted would have created artificial and improper analyses of subparts of data. This ruling also means that plaintiffs’ own statistical proof will receive full consideration at trial.

Fourth, the Court excluded from trial the entire opinions of Goldman’s industry expert and its job analysis expert.  It also excluded certain opinions of Goldman’s statistical expert, including “methodologically flawed” statistical analyses which disaggregated data down to the business unit level, and analyses where Goldman’s expert just removed top-earning VPs and Associates (almost all men) from the studies without a methodologically sound basis for doing so.

Fifth, the Court rejected almost all of Goldman’s attempts to trim plaintiffs’ expert opinions, including rejecting Goldman’s attacks on how plaintiffs’ statistical expert modeled the data.  The Court agreed with plaintiffs that plaintiffs’ expert on climates for harassment and bias may testify at trial that Goldman’s climate is tolerant of gender bias and harassment.

The Order may be read in full here.

A trial date has not been set, but could happen as early as this year.

Lieff Cabraser partner Kelly Dermody, who serves as Co-Lead Counsel in the case, noted, “We are gratified by this Order and look forward to the opportunity to seek a liability verdict for the Class at trial.”

For more information on the case and its procedural history, visit goldmangendercase.com.

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