He said that sum acknowledged the pervasive harassment Diaz faced while reflecting that he had worked at the factory for only nine months and had not alleged any physical injury or illness.Įmployment discrimination cases rarely yield verdicts of more than $1 million, let alone nine-figure sums. District Judge William Orrick last year reduced the compensatory damages to $1.5 million and the punitive damages to $13.5 million. The jury in 2021 awarded Diaz nearly $7 million in compensatory damages for emotional distress, and $130 million in punitive damages, designed to punish unlawful conduct and deter it in the future. In his 2017 lawsuit, Diaz accused Tesla of failing to act when he complained to managers in 2015 that employees at the factory frequently used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures and epithets on walls and workstations.ĭiaz sued Tesla for causing him emotional distress under a California law prohibiting employers from failing to prevent hostile work environments based on race and other protected traits. "There is almost no evidence of anything you just heard other than a lawyer saying it happened eight years later," Spiro said.Īs at the last trial, Diaz and several employees and managers at the Fremont plant are expected to testify. But he suggested that Diaz was exaggerating his claims and could not prove that he suffered psychological damage warranting money damages.
Diaz's lawyers rejected the lower payout and opted for a new trial on damages.Īlex Spiro, a lawyer for Tesla, told the jury that any racist conduct at the plant was indefensible. workplace discrimination case, to $15 million. Last year, a judge slashed the $137 million verdict that a different jury awarded in 2021 to Diaz, one of the largest ever in a U.S. The trial is scheduled to last five days. is a conscious decision not to protect African American employees inside their workplace," the lawyer, Bernard Alexander, said. March 27 (Reuters) - A trial kicked off in San Francisco federal court on Monday to determine how much money Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) must pay to a Black elevator operator whom a jury determined was subjected to severe racial harassment while working at the electric auto maker's flagship assembly plant.Ī lawyer for plaintiff Owen Diaz told a jury during opening statements that the racist slurs, graffiti and threats his client faced were part of a "plantation mentality" at the Fremont, California factory where Black workers were treated as second-class citizens.
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