{"id":89937,"date":"2023-04-04T02:02:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T02:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/04\/04\/tesla-carmaker-told-to-pay-ex-worker-3-2m-over-racism-case\/"},"modified":"2023-04-04T02:02:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T02:02:04","slug":"tesla-carmaker-told-to-pay-ex-worker-3-2m-over-racism-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/04\/04\/tesla-carmaker-told-to-pay-ex-worker-3-2m-over-racism-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla: Carmaker told to pay ex-worker $3.2m over racism case"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Electric car maker Tesla has been ordered to pay a black former worker nearly $3.2million (\u00a32.6million) after winning a racial harassment lawsuit.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Owen Diaz, an elevator operator from 2015 to 2016 at his Fremont factory, was exposed to an anti-racial work environment, a federal jury found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, the payment was reduced by 98% from the $137 million he was originally awarded in 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A judge ruled last year that the original amount was too high.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Monday, Mr. Diaz was awarded $3 million in punitive damages and $175,000 in damages for emotional distress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“If we had been allowed to bring in new evidence, the verdict would have been imo zero,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe jury did their best with the information available to them. I respect the decision,” he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Musk did not provide details of what new evidence Tesla would have presented.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tesla’s attorney, Alex Spiro, declined to comment. The company did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the original lawsuit, Mr. Diaz alleged that African-American workers at the company’s Fremont, California plant “encountered a scene straight out of the Jim Crow era.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He claimed that black workers were regularly confronted with racist slurs on factory floors and racist graffiti in bathrooms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The lawsuit also said employees would label areas where black or African-American employees worked with racially historical names, such as “plantation.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was alleged that a worker heard racial slurs “50 to 100 times a day”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2021, a federal court in San Francisco found that Tesla failed to take adequate steps to address the abuse, despite complaints to supervisors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The jury awarded Mr. Diaz $137 million in damages. At the time Tesla disputed the verdict but said it was “not perfect”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In April 2022, a US federal judge reduced Mr. Diaz’s award to $15 million, saying the award decided by the jury was “extremely high.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bernard Alexander, a lawyer for Mr Diaz, said last week: ‘Mr Diaz’s view of the world has changed permanently. That’s what happens when you deprive a person of security.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Alexander asked the jury to award his client nearly $160 million in damages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, Tesla’s lawyer, Mr. Spiro, argued that Mr. Diaz’s lawyers had failed to prove that Tesla caused serious, long-lasting damages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They just throw numbers on the screen like this is some kind of game show,” Mr Spiro said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n