A federal jury in San Francisco ordered Tesla on Monday to pay about $3.2 million to a Black man who had accused the carmaker of ignoring racial abuse he faced while working at its California factory.<\/p>\n
The award was far less than the $137 million that a different jury awarded two years ago, mostly in punitive damages. The judge in that trial later reduced the figure to $15 million, prompting the plaintiff, Owen Diaz, to challenge the amount in a new trial.<\/p>\n
But rather than more money, he will come away with less. After a five-day trial, the jury awarded $3 million in punitive damages, and $175,000 in past and future noneconomic damages.<\/p>\n
Mr. Diaz said he had been subjected to repeated racist offenses while working as a contractor at Tesla\u2019s factory in Fremont, near San Francisco, in 2015 and 2016. While there, he said, a supervisor and other colleagues frequently used racial slurs, including in reference to him. Employees also wrote racial epithets, and drew symbols and caricatures, around the factory, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Diaz said that the offenses had taken an emotional toll on him and that he had brought them to the company\u2019s attention, but that Tesla had done little to address them. He said he had tolerated the hostilities until his son began working at the factory and faced similar treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prevalence of the use of the N-word inside of Tesla\u2019s workplace is an indication that they did not care about how their African American employees felt,\u201d Bernard Alexander, one of Mr. Diaz\u2019s lawyers, said in a closing argument in the latest trial. \u201cIt was a complete affront to every African American inside the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tesla\u2019s lawyers suggested that Mr. Diaz had overstated the impact and extent of the racial harassment he had faced, encouraging the jury to minimize the damage award.<\/p>\n
But the company\u2019s liability for having subjected Mr. Diaz to a hostile work environment and having failed to prevent racial harassment was not on trial. That had already been \u201cconclusively determined,\u201d Judge William H. Orrick said in instructions provided to jurors. Instead, the jury\u2019s responsibility was to determine how much Mr. Diaz was owed.<\/p>\n
Judge Orrick also presided over the original trial.<\/p>\n
After the 2021 trial, Tesla\u2019s head of human resources said the company had fired two contractors and suspended another in response to Mr. Diaz\u2019s complaints. The executive acknowledged that the company was \u201cnot perfect\u201d in 2015 and 2016, but said that it had since come a long way.<\/p>\n