In a court filing today (PDF), attorneys for former Kleiner Perkins employee Ellen Pao said that the venture capital firm's $1 million request for costs after her recent gender discrimination trial is “improper under the law” and “grossly excessive and unreasonable.”

Kleiner recently prevailed in a jury trial brought by Ellen Pao, who asserted that the firm had discriminated against her by not promoting her after she raised complaints about harassment. In April, Kleiner filed a request asking her to reimburse the firm $972,814 in court costs, including $864,680 in expert witness fees, as well as $59,000 in deposition costs. Kleiner said that it would waive attorney's fees.

Kleiner also noted in a press statement in April that it would waive all legal costs if Pao would agree not to seek an appeal. Pao's attorneys had 15 days to respond to Kleiner's request for costs. She has until June 8 to decide whether she will appeal or not. Reuters has noted that an appeal would be especially bold given that California Appeals Courts statistically side with juries more often than not on employment issues.

Pao's attorneys wrote that in order for Kleiner to recover expert witness fees, Kleiner must show that that the “action was brought in bad faith, frivolously, or maliciously.” Re/code notes that this assertion is bolstered by a separate ruling made this very week by the California Supreme Court. In that case, the court decided in Williams v. Chino Independent Fire District that expert witness costs could not be recovered from plaintiffs unless it could be proved that the plaintiff had acted with a malicious intent.

Kleiner Perkins' lawyers also revealed in their April filing that they had offered Pao a $964,502 settlement in November 2014. But in today's response, Pao's attorneys said that that offer “was not made in good faith and had no reasonable expectation of acceptance, given the extremely high liability exposure and the extensive attorney's fees that had been generated as of the offer.” In November 2014, just months before the case with to a jury, Pao's legal fees had climbed to $632,500, according to a separate filing (PDF) from one of Pao's lawyers, Alan Exelrod.

Pao's attorneys took also exception to what they called the exorbitant fees charged by Kleiner's expert witnesses. “Much of the expert fees are unreasonable and unnecessary, particularly when compared to the expert fees of the Plaintiff's experts,” Pao's attorneys argued. Most notably, Paul Gompers, the Harvard Business School professor who argued that women are very well represented at Kleiner Perkins relative to other venture capital firms, charged $900 an hour for 146 hours of his expertise.

The Wall Street Journal writes that a hearing on Kleiner Perkins’ request for costs will take place June 18. Pao's attorneys asked that the court deny any award of costs to Kleiner Perkins, but if not that, then they asked the court to strike all of Kleiner Perkins' expert fees.