Ex Black Tesla Employee Rejects Court’s $15M Order In Racial Abuse Case

Black Former Tesla Employee Rejects Court’s $15M Order In Racial Abuse Case

Back in October Owen Diaz won his racial abuse case against Tesla where he was an elevator operator. He’s now rejected his $15M award and it may be worth it.

Diaz originally went after Tesla for the treatment he received working at their Fremont, California factory.

He said his coworkers referred to him as racial slurs and a supervisor called him the n-word more than 30 times between 2015 and 2016. After Diaz’s testimony, a federal jury awarded him a $137M win back in October.

 

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Here’s where it gets tricky though! A San Francisco federal judge, William Orrick, slashed the $137M win down to $15M and told Diaz he had two weeks to accept it. The judge believed the original award was “excessive”.

Diaz’s lawyer feels like the slashed reward isn’t enough to keep Tesla from having the same issue in the future. The rejection of the awards will now trigger a new trial.

Tesla is one of the world’s most valuable companies and remains the world’s most valuable automaker with a market capitalization of more than US$600 billion.

The company had the most worldwide sales of battery electric vehicles and plug-in electric vehicles, capturing 23% of the battery-electric (purely electric) market and 16% of the plug-in market (which includes plug-in hybrids) in 2020.