Tesla faces new race bias trial from employee who had $137 million verdict cut

Story by By Daniel Wiessner • Today


FILE PHOTO: Tesla's primary vehicle factory in Fremont© Thomson Reuters

(Reuters) - A trial kicks off in San Francisco federal court on Monday to determine how much money Tesla Inc must pay to a Black elevator operator who a jury determined was subjected to severe racial harassment while working at the electric auto maker's flagship assembly plant.

The trial is scheduled to last five days. Last year, a judge slashed the $137 million verdict that the jury awarded in 2021 to plaintiff Owen Diaz, one of the largest ever in a U.S. workplace discrimination case. Diaz's lawyers rejected the lower payout and opted for a new trial on damages.

After the 2021 trial, U.S. District Judge William Orrick agreed with a jury that Tesla was liable for race discrimination but cut the verdict to $15 million. Orrick is also presiding over this week's trial, and has barred both sides from presenting new evidence or calling new witnesses.

As at the last trial, Diaz and several employees and managers at the Fremont, California plant are expected to testify.

In his 2017 lawsuit, Diaz accused Tesla of failing to act when he complained to managers that employees at the factory frequently used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures and epithets on walls and workstations.

Diaz sued Tesla for causing him emotional distress under a California law prohibiting employers from failing to prevent hostile work environments based on race and other protected traits.

The jury in 2021 awarded Diaz nearly $7 million in compensatory damages for emotional distress, and $130 million in punitive damages, designed to punish unlawful conduct and deter it in the future.

Orrick last year reduced the compensatory damages to $1.5 million and the punitive damages to $13.5 million. He said that sum acknowledged the pervasive harassment Diaz faced while reflecting that he had worked at the factory for only nine months and had not alleged any physical injury or illness.

Employment discrimination cases rarely yield verdicts of more than $1 million, let alone nine-figure sums. The U.S. Supreme Court has said punitive damages typically should be no more than 10 times compensatory damages.

Lawrence Organ, a lawyer for Diaz, said he hoped the new jury would return a larger verdict than the $15 million award offered by Orrick and convince the judge higher damages are warranted.

"Tesla is focused on trying to get that number to zero," Organ said, "but that's a very cynical view to have a Black man racially harassed and suggest that is not worth a lot of money."

Tesla has said it does not tolerate discrimination, and its lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. The company had urged Orrick to reduce the original jury award to no more than $600,000.

Tesla also faces claims of tolerating widespread race bias at the Fremont plant in a class action in California state court and a separate lawsuit by the state's civil rights watchdog making similar allegations. Both cases are still in early stages.

The outcome of Diaz's trial will not directly affect those lawsuits or other court cases, but could encourage workers to file new lawsuits against the company as it battles mounting challenges to its dominance of the electric car market.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and David Gregorio)

Anti-Giga Berlin Protesters Vandalize Tesla Store In Germany

Story by Ben O'Hare • Saturday, March 25,2023

tesla-store-vandalized© InsideEVs
Protesters used paint bombs and posters to voice their anger against Tesla's latest Gigafactory.

Anumber of anti-Giga Berlin protesters attacked a Tesla store in central Berlin earlier this week. The motive for the protest was apparently Giga Berlin’s high water consumption levels. The destruction of a local forest to make way for Giga Berlin was seemingly another reason.

Protesters threw paint bombs against the exterior of the store and also stuck posters with anti-Tesla messages on its walls. One of the posters read "Driving For A Dead Planet" - a jibe at the environmental cost of producing a lithium-ion BEV.

The protesters demanded increased public transport funding. As opposed to backing Tesla, they called for the German government to instead offer "well-developed and free public transport for everyone in Berlin and Brandenburg". They also issued the following statement (via Teslarati):

“The repeated environmental violations of the US corporation during the construction and expansion of the gigafactory in #Grünheide and the robbing of valuable #Wasser |s in our region are criminal… Neo-colonialism during #Lithium mining in the Atacama Desert in #Chile destroys the livelihoods of the people in the assisted areas. No more liter of water for Tesla!”

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Giga Berlin has been in operation since March 2022 and currently produces over 4,000 Model Y crossovers per week. As car factories go, it's relatively sustainable with a lot of its power coming from solar and wind energy. It also doesn't use that much water given its ginormous size, despite what the Berlin protesters are claiming.

Moreover, a recent report claimed Tesla would require no extra water when Giga Berlin production doubles. The report claims the automaker will be able to use the same water consumption it currently does when it's making one million EVs per annum.

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