Tesla must pay a Black former Tesla worker about $3.2 million, most of it in punitive damages, after a judge in the racism-based case threw out an earlier jury award of $137 million.
On Monday, a jury awarded Owen Diaz $3 million in punitive damages, plus $175,000 in non-economic damages, according to the verdict form released by the court.
Diaz alleged in a 2017 lawsuit against Tesla that as a contracted elevator operator at the firm’s electric car factory in Fremont in 2015 and 2016, he endured “daily racist epithets,” including the n-word, and that colleagues drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the plant.
