A San Francisco federal jury has ordered Tesla to pay $3 million in punitive damages and $175,000 in financial damages to Owen Diaz, a former elevator operator on the firm’s manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, after he endured a racially hostile work atmosphere throughout his time on the firm.
Diaz, a Black man, was employed as a contract employee at Tesla in 2015 by way of a staffing company.
He was beforehand awarded a verdict of $137 million in 2021, together with punitive damages, after a jury decided Diaz had suffered civil rights violations at Tesla, and that the electrical car maker didn’t take all affordable steps to finish and stop the racist harassment.
Diaz and Tesla sought a retrial to resolve damages after Choose William H. Orrick diminished the quantity to $15 million.
A distressed and at instances tearful Diaz instructed the court docket once more final week about how his colleagues at Tesla used racist epithets to denigrate him and different Black employees, made him really feel bodily unsafe at work, instructed him to “return to Africa” and left racist graffiti within the restrooms and a racist drawing in his workspace.
The drawing left at his workspace was a rudimentary one which resembled Inki the Caveman, a Fifties period cartoon extensively thought to be racist, whose primary character is a Black boy portrayed with massive lips, carrying a loincloth, earrings, and a bone by way of his hair.
Diaz additionally testified that whereas he had inspired his son to work at Tesla, he now considers that one of many biggest regrets of his life as a result of his son was additionally uncovered to a racially hostile office there.
Counsel for the plaintiff, Bernard Alexander of Morrison Alexander & Fehr, in his closing arguments urged the jury to carry Tesla accountable for failing to cease and stop the racist harassment of staff, and for the struggling Diaz endured.
“No Black man in 2015 ought to ever be subjected,” Alexander mentioned, “to this plantation mentality office.”
Alexander additionally urged jurors to resolve on damages in an quantity that “will get Tesla’s consideration.” He characterised Tesla an organization that has to accuse others of mendacity, as a result of they can not clarify why they’d enable violations of the Civil Rights Act at their manufacturing facility.
The plaintiffs requested the jury to think about punitive damages round $150 million for Tesla, and to award Diaz $6.3 million in previous non-economic damages, and $2 million in future non-economic damages.
Tesla counsel Alex Spiro argued that Diaz ought to solely be awarded damages amounting to about half of his wage, some tens of hundreds of {dollars}, not thousands and thousands. Diaz had not disclosed his wage through the course of the trial, Choose William Orrick mentioned within the midst of Spiro’s closing argument final week on Friday.
Spiro additionally instructed jurors on Friday that Diaz “lied to you.” He characterised the previous Tesla contract employee as a confrontational particular person, who exaggerated points in his testimony repeatedly. Diaz had beforehand mis-stated the variety of months he had labored at Tesla, Spiro mentioned. Spiro additionally accused Diaz of mendacity about his struggling to a physician with a view to search larger financial damages from the corporate.
Evoking the Civil Rights Act, Diaz’s lawyer known as on jurors to make an instance of Tesla, saying “Do justice and justice just isn’t low-cost.”
Tesla has been sued greater than 200 instances by present or former contractors and staff since 2018 within the U.S., based on authorized information database Plainsite. That quantity doesn’t account for disputes which have gone straight to arbitration. As CNBC has beforehand reported, the place it’s authorized to take action, Tesla has compelled staff to conform to necessary arbitration.
Final week, a former Tesla service supervisor, a Black man named John Goode, filed a lawsuit in Northern California alleging {that a} white man who was his supervisor in Georgia repeatedly made racist remarks in his presence, was racially biased in opposition to him and one other Black colleague, had him fired on false pretenses in retaliation after Goode objected to this remedy.
