A San Francisco federal court jury on Monday ruled that Tesla must pay $137 million to a Black man who said he endured racist abuse …
A San Francisco federal court jury on Monday ruled that Tesla must pay $137 million to a Black man who said he endured racist abuse while working at the company’s Fremont, California, plant as an elevator operator. Owen Diaz was hired at the factory via an agency in 2015. Per CNBC, he told the court that colleagues would verbally abuse him and other Black workers, for example telling him to “go back to Africa.” He also said racist graffiti was scrawled in the bathrooms, per CNBC. Diaz told the court that he suffered “sleepless nights” and weight loss after he lost his appetite, per Bloomberg, which first reported the decision. “Some days I would just sit on my stairs and cry,” he told the jury, per Bloomberg. The jury awarded $130 million in punitive damages and $6.9 million for emotional distress, per the reports. David Oppenheimer, a clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law, told Bloomberg that he believed it was the “largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case.” In reaction to the verdict on Monday, Tesla’s VP of people, Valerie Capers Workman, published a blog post arguing that the facts of the case didn’t justify the verdict.
