Last year, Owen Diaz, a former contract elevator operator at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant, successfully sued the automaker for creating a hostile, racially abusive work environment and was awarded $137 million by the jury. That award was reduced to just $15 million by a judge, who gave Diaz two weeks to accept or reject the new amount. As reported through Bloomberg, Lawyers for Diaz have chosen the latter option.
“By dismissing the court’s excessive curtailment by calling for a new trial, Mr. Diaz is once again asking a jury of his peers to evaluate what Tesla did to him and provide fair compensation for the spate of racial slurs that have been used.” were directed against him.” Diaz’s attorneys in a statement NBC News.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2017, detailed a work environment where black workers were regularly subjected to racial slurs and other abuse, allegedly with at least one supervisor tell Diaz, “going back to Africa” - issues he also claims the company has been negligent in addressing. Tesla has pushed back countered some of Diaz’s claims, arguing that it took timely action to stop the harassment, claiming these racial slurs were “used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues”. It also argued that because of its status as a contractor, it was not liable for how Diaz was treated.
A jury last year Diaz totaled $6.9 million in compensatory damages and $130 million in punitive damages, which likely would have been one of the two in a lawsuit alleging corporate racial discrimination. U.S. District Judge William Orrick, in an opinion filed in April, contended that Tesla was not liable for a contract employee, but also cut the bonus amount, calling it “excessive.” He the damages at $1.5 million and the punitive damages at $13.5 million. Now that Diaz’s attorneys have rejected the arbitral award, the case will be retried.
The automaker is also facing another lawsuit filed by the California Department of Equal Employment and Housing on behalf of more than 4,000 former and current black Tesla employees. According to three former Tesla workers until Los Angeles TimesBlack workers at the Fremont plant were segregated, given the most difficult jobs, and more disciplined than other workers.
This article was previously published on Source link
