While it may not be physiologically true, they say the fish rots from the head down. Tesla is proving to be the rule here. And it looks like they’re gonna have to pay for it.
On Friday, Tesla has settled with Owen Diaz a former Tesla employee according to a court filing on Friday. Both were fighting a $3.2 million verdict from a federal appeals court but decided to settle. According to a joint stipulation for dismissal, it reads that “the Parties have executed a final, binding settlement agreement that fully resolves all claims.”
While we don’t know what the terms are, hopefully Diaz got some of that $3.2 million. The trial had been going on since 2021 which initially saw Diaz being awarded $137 million. It was then reduced to $15 million in April 2022 based on the amount of evidence presented and the law. This led Diaz to re-litigate and was then awarded $3.2 million in April of 2023.
In the April 2022 ruling, Orrick had wrote that “In May 2016, he [Diaz] was ‘separated’ from Tesla without prior warning.”
The evidence was disturbing. The jury heard that the Tesla factory was saturated with racism. Diaz faced frequent racial abuse, including the N-word and other slurs. Other employees harassed him. His supervisors and Tesla’s broader management structure did little or nothing to respond. And supervisors even joined in on the abuse, one going so far as to threaten Diaz and draw a racist caricature near his workstation.”
US District Judge William Orrick
Of course, Tesla denies any of this stating that “no reasonable jury, properly instructed, could award any punitive damages against Tesla on the record here.” It maintained it “enforced a policy prohibiting racially hostile conduct,” it “took concrete and significant steps to remedy each and every racial incident Mr. Diaz reported,” and “likewise took concrete and significant steps to remedy other racially inappropriate conduct of which it was aware.”
It looks like the jury definitely disagrees with you.
Source: Ars Technica
