Tesla in a brand new courtroom submitting has solid doubt on the extent of racism at its Fremont manufacturing unit and whether or not a Black former employee suffered racism-based misery, the newest long-running lawsuit alleging that attitudes on the plant recalled the “Jim Crow period” in U.S. historical past.
Former Tesla contractor Owen Diaz, a Black man who labored as an elevator operator within the electrical automobile plant in 2015 and 2016, claimed in his 2017 lawsuit that he and different Black employees had been known as racial slurs every day, that he was instructed to “return to Africa” and that he was subjected to “vitriolic racial harassment.” The courtroom additional heard Diaz discovered swastikas and racist graffiti together with “loss of life to all (n-words)” on partitions within the plant.
Final yr, a jury awarded Diaz $137 million, however in April, Choose William Orrick in U.S. District Court docket in San Francisco slashed the quantity to $15 million. Orrick mentioned he was sure by precedent to scale back the award however mentioned the jury had ample cause to consider Diaz suffered extreme emotional hurt. Orrick famous that “supervisors even joined in on the abuse, one going as far as to threaten Diaz and draw a racist caricature close to his workstation.”
Diaz in June rejected the decreased cost, and Orrick denied his try and attraction it, giving him two weeks to simply accept the decrease award or have the brand new trial Tesla was in search of. Diaz refused the decrease award, and Orrick ordered a brand new trial, however solely on the damages quantity.
Tesla in a courtroom submitting Friday is asking Orrick to transcend the problem of the damages, to incorporate whether or not Tesla is legally responsible for any racism on the Fremont manufacturing unit.
“Compensatory and punitive damages listed here are inextricably intertwined with legal responsibility,” Tesla argued within the submitting.
Tesla in its submitting questioned whether or not Diaz skilled racist incidents or suffered misery, saying he was “supposedly subjected to racial slurs,” and referring to his “purported emotional misery.”
The corporate is embroiled in a number of authorized battles over alleged racism in its amenities. In February, California’s civil rights regulator sued Tesla — which moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Texas late final yr — claiming Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing unit had been paid lower than white employees, denied developments and confronted day by day racist abuse, together with a noose drawn in a toilet subsequent to a reference to lynching. The corporate, led by CEO Elon Musk, has known as that lawsuit by the Division of Truthful Employment and Housing “misguided” and mentioned it “strongly opposes all types of discrimination and harassment (and) has all the time disciplined and terminated workers who interact in misconduct, together with those that use racial slurs or harass others in numerous methods.”
Earlier this yr, Kaylen Barker, a Black employee at a Tesla components manufacturing unit in Lathrop, claimed in a lawsuit that after a white co-worker known as her a racial slur and assaulted her, Tesla fired then quickly rehired her assailant. In March, Marcellous Cage, a Black former supervisor for Tesla, claimed in a lawsuit that White co-workers tormented him and he was fired partially due to his race. In Might, an arbitrator ordered Tesla to pay $1 million to Melvin Berry, a Black former Tesla manufacturing unit employee known as racial slurs by supervisors. In July, 15 Black employees and former employees sued the corporate claiming it did nothing to repair a racist work setting that included harassment, intimidation and discrimination. Tesla can also be nonetheless combating a 2017 lawsuit by former employee Marcus Vaughn, a Black man who claimed the Fremont manufacturing unit flooring was a “hotbed for racist conduct.”
Tesla’s submitting within the Diaz case signaled the corporate intends to assault claims of widespread racism on the Fremont manufacturing unit, arguing that the unique discovering of legal responsibility towards it “turned on the supposed existence of racial slurs and symbols at Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing unit so systemic and pervasive as to create a racially hostile office setting.”