A former worker at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California has been awarded almost $3.2m after winning a racial harassment claim against the electric car manufacturer.
A federal judge has awarded Owen Diaz, who is Black, $3m in punitive damages and $175,000 in damages for emotional distress. This is, however, a huge step down from the $137m that he was originally awarded in 2021. It is also less than the $15m that the plaintiff was offered last year and which he turned down.
Tesla's lawyer, Alex Spiro, argued that “Diaz was a confrontational worker who had exaggerated his claims of emotional distress, and said his lawyers failed to show any serious, long-lasting damage caused by Tesla,” reports Reuters. “They’re just throwing numbers up on the screen like this is some kind of game show,” Spiro said in court.
Diaz said that black workers at the factory faced racial slurs as well as racial graffiti in the bathrooms. BBC News adds: “...employees would refer to areas where black or African-American staff worked with racist historical names, such as "the plantation".
Tesla’s co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk took to Twitter, which he now owns, to give his view on the decision. "If we had been allowed to introduce new evidence, the verdict would've been zero imo.” He added: "Jury did the best they could with the information they had. I respect the decision.”
