Owen Diaz's long court battle against Tesla is officially over, now that both sides have reached a settlement. Attorney Lawrence Organ, Díaz's attorney, said CNBC that the “parties have reached an amicable resolution of their disputes,” but that the “terms of the agreement are confidential.” If he's been following this case for a while, that means he won't be able to know how much Diaz will receive after the whopping $137 million in damages he was originally awarded were dramatically reduced to $3.2 million.
The former elevator operator sued the automaker for allowing a racist workplace, saying he faced discrimination “straight from the Jim Crow era” as a Black individual. He said his co-workers left swastika drawings and racist graffiti, like those of Inki the Caveman, in his workspace and around Tesla's Fremont assembly plant. Díaz also said that he and other black workers were subjected to racial slurs and that the company did not address these behaviors despite repeated complaints.
In 2021, a San Francisco court ordered Tesla to pay $137 million in damages to its former worker, which was one of the largest amounts awarded to a plaintiff who filed a discrimination lawsuit. However, during appeals that followed, a judge found the amount excessive and reduced it to $15 million, although he upheld the original jury's verdict. The parties returned to trial after Diaz rejected the reduced amount, but a jury further reduced the damages Tesla must pay to $3.2 million. At the time, Díaz's lawyer said that he was unfairly attacked by the defense and that they had already requested a new trial for misconduct. It appears that both sides have since agreed to negotiate behind closed doors.
As Diaz's case concludes, Organ is also representing Marcus Vaughn, who filed another lawsuit against the automaker for racial harassment. Vaughn called Tesla's Fremont plant a “hotbed of racist behavior” and last year asked the court to accept his lawsuit. class action lawsuit status to be able to add 240 black colleagues to his complaint.
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