Tesla has settled a long-running lawsuit by a black former factory employee who claimed he was subjected to severe racial harassment, in response to a court filing on Friday, as the electrical carmaker faces a series of other discrimination lawsuits.
Tesla and lawyers for Owen Diaz, a former elevator operator at the corporate’s Fremont, Calif., assembly plant, didn’t disclose details of the settlement within the filing in San Francisco federal court.
The agreement ends appeals that each side were pursuing after a jury last 12 months awarded Diaz $3.2 million in damages. Tesla claimed it was not accountable for the alleged discrimination and Diaz had argued that the corporate’s lawyers engaged in misconduct warranting a recent trial.
A unique jury in 2021 awarded Diaz $137 million, one among the biggest verdicts ever in a discrimination case involving a single employee. But a judge found that the decision was excessive and ordered a second trial after Diaz refused a lowered award of $15 million.
Diaz, who first sued Tesla in 2017, claimed that when he worked on the Fremont plant he was subjected on a each day basis to racial slurs, scrawled swastikas and other racist conduct, and that Tesla ignored his complaints.
Tesla and lawyers for Diaz didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment. The corporate has said it doesn’t tolerate discrimination and has fired employees accused of racist conduct.
Tesla faces similar claims of tolerating race bias on the Fremont plant in a pending class motion on behalf of 6,000 staff, separate cases from California and US anti-bias agencies, and multiple lawsuits involving individual employees. The corporate has denied wrongdoing in those cases.
