- On Monday, a San Francisco-based Black former Tesla Inc. employee won a racial harassment case and was awarded $3.2 million.
- Diaz alleged Tesla did nothing when he repeatedly informed top management of employees' racial harassment at Tesla's Fremont, California, site.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes if the court had let his company present fresh evidence in the retrial, "the verdict would've been zero."
A Black former employee of Tesla Inc. in San Francisco was awarded approximately $3.2 million on Monday due to his victory in a racial harassment lawsuit against the electric vehicle manufacturer.
According to Reuters, the judgment followed a one-week retrial of the 2017 Tesla lawsuit by petitioner Owen Diaz, who was granted $137 million by a separate jury in 2021.
Tesla was found to be at fault by that jury, but the court deemed the award excessive. Although Diaz rejected the lower $15 million award, he opted for a new trial of the Tesla race bias case on injuries.
Owen Diaz rejected the settlement offer and reopened the damages case, asking for approximately $160 million.
On Monday, the jury awarded Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator, $175,000 in emotional anguish damages and $3 million in punitive penalties to punish the transgression and prevent it from happening again.
Diaz said that Tesla did nothing when he constantly informed upper management of workers' usage of racial insults and the presence of swastikas, racist caricatures, and epithets written on walls and other surfaces around the Tesla Fremont, California, facility.
Elon Musk Reacts on Tesla Lawsuit Verdict
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, posted on Twitter that if the court had let the business present fresh evidence in the retrial of the Tesla race bias case, "the verdict would've been zero."
The tech magnate added that he respects the jury's decision on the Tesla lawsuit, acknowledging that they "did the best they could with the knowledge they had."
Requests for comments about the Tesla lawsuit verdict from Tesla and Diaz's attorneys were not immediately fulfilled. The Elon Musk-owned corporation, which has stated that it does not permit workplace discrimination, takes worker concerns seriously.
In his closing arguments on Friday, Diaz's attorney, Bernard Alexander, pleaded with the jury to grant him close to $160 million in damages and make it known to Tesla and other major corporations that they would be held responsible for failing to resolve prejudice.
According to a New York Post report, the lawyer said that Diaz's perspective of the world had been irrevocably altered.
Alex Spiro, the attorney for Tesla, disagreed, claiming that Diaz had inflated his allegations of mental suffering and that his attorneys had failed to demonstrate any significant, long-lasting harm brought on by Tesla.
Tesla Facing Similar Racial Bias Complaints
Similar accusations of allowing racial discrimination are leveled against the EV manufacturer. The California Department of Fair Employment filed a Tesla lawsuit, and Housing filed a complaint against Tesla in February, claiming racial harassment and discrimination at the Tesla Fremont manufacturing facility.
Tesla has been trying to stop the Tesla lawsuit to resolve claims out of court, something the company thinks should have been possible before the complaint was submitted, per the Tech Times.
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