A federal jury in San Francisco on Monday ordered Tesla to pay about $3.2 million to a black former worker after the electric-vehicle maker was found to have failed to stop severe racial harassment at its flagship assembly plant in California.
The decision got here after a week-long trial within the 2017 lawsuit by plaintiff Owen Diaz, who in 2021 was awarded $137 million by a special jury.
He opted for a recent trial on damages after a judge agreed with that jury that Tesla was liable but significantly reduced the award to $15 million.
Diaz accused Tesla of failing to act when he repeatedly complained to managers that employees on the Fremont, Calif., factory steadily used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures and epithets on partitions and work areas.
The jury on Monday awarded Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator, $175,000 in damages for emotional distress and $3 million in punitive damages designed to punish illegal conduct and deter it in the longer term.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a tweet said “the decision would’ve been zero” if the judge had allowed the corporate to introduce recent evidence within the retrial.
Musk added: “Jury did the perfect they might with the data that they had. I respect the choice.”
Bernard Alexander, a lawyer for Diaz, urged jurors during closing statements on Friday to award him nearly $160 million in damages, and send a message to Tesla and other large firms that they might be held accountable for failing to handle discrimination.
“Mr. Diaz’s outlook on the world has been permanently modified,” Alexander said. “That’s what happens whenever you take away an individual’s safety.”
Tesla’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, countered that Diaz was a confrontational employee who had exaggerated his claims of emotional distress, and said his lawyers failed to point out any serious, long-lasting damage attributable to Tesla.
“They’re just throwing numbers up on the screen like this is a few form of game show,” Spiro said.
Tesla and lawyers for Diaz didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment on the decision. The corporate has said it doesn’t tolerate workplace discrimination and takes employee complaints seriously.
Diaz testified last week, tearfully recounting various incidents throughout the nine months that he worked on the Fremont factory. Diaz said the job made him anxious and strained his relationship together with his son, who also worked on the plant.
Lawyers for Tesla highlighted what they said were inconsistencies in Diaz’s testimony and repeatedly raised the indisputable fact that he didn’t lodge written complaints to supervisors. Diaz testified that he verbally complained to managers quite a few times and discussed his complaints with Tesla human resources officials.
The EV maker is facing similar claims of tolerating race discrimination on the Fremont plant and other workplaces in a pending class motion by black employees, a separate case from a California civil rights agency, and multiple cases involving individual employees. The corporate has denied wrongdoing in those cases.
Diaz had sued Tesla for violating a California law that prohibits employers from failing to handle hostile work environments based on race or other protected traits.
The primary jury in 2021 awarded Diaz $7 million in damages for emotional distress and a staggering $130 million in punitive damages. The award was considered one of the biggest in an employment discrimination case in US history.
US District Judge William Orrick last 12 months agreed with the jury that Tesla had broken the law, but said the award was excessive and cut it to $15 million. The US Supreme Court has said punitive damages typically must be not more than 10 times compensatory damages.
Orrick said Diaz had worked on the factory for under nine months and had not alleged any physical injury or illness warranting a better award.
On Friday, Orrick denied a motion by Diaz’s lawyers for a mistrial. They claimed Tesla’s legal team violated Orrick’s bar on introducing recent evidence within the retrial by questioning Diaz and other witnesses about incidents where he allegedly made racist or sexual comments.
Orrick said those questions were related to other incidents discussed in the primary trial, and that Diaz’s lawyers had not shown that the questioning prejudiced the jury.
