Goldman CEO Solomon’s Testimony Sought in Gender Pay-Bias Case
Goldman CEO Solomon’s Testimony Sought in Gender Pay-Bias Case
(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief David Solomon and two former top executives of the bank are among those whose testimony is sought in one of the biggest gender pay-discrimination lawsuits in Wall Street’s history.
The suit was filed in 2010 by former employees who claimed that Goldman made biased compensation decisions and denied women opportunities they had earned. At a teleconference in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, lawyers for the plaintiffs referred to a request they had made to depose the chief executive officer, as well as former CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former president Gary Cohn, who later served as President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser.
Lawyers for Goldman told U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger the request was improper because there was no evidence the executives had unique knowledge of the complaints.
Leslie Shribman, a spokesperson for Goldman, declined to comment on the proposed depositions.
The lawsuit was granted class action status in 2018, allowing four women who worked for the bank to represent more than 2,000. In March, Lehrburger dealt them a blow, ruling that the bank could force more than 1,000 of the women into arbitration, one of corporate America’s most powerful weapons for fending off discrimination claims.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.