A federal choose in California on Monday ordered a brand new trial on the damages Tesla Inc. owes to a Black former manufacturing facility employee who accused the corporate of race discrimination, after he turned down a $15 million award.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco granted Tesla’s movement for a brand new trial every week after the previous elevator operator, Owen Diaz, mentioned he wouldn’t settle for the choose’s award.
Tesla and attorneys for Diaz didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
A jury final October had awarded Diaz $137 million, one of many largest verdicts ever in a discrimination case involving a single employee. Orrick in April mentioned Tesla was liable to Diaz for discrimination, however he mentioned the award was extreme and lowered it to $15 million.
Diaz’s attorneys mentioned final week that the decrease award was unjust and undermined his constitutional rights.
Orrick didn’t set a date for the brand new trial, however scheduled a convention for July 12.
In his 2017 lawsuit, Diaz alleged that his colleagues and a supervisor at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., meeting plant subjected him to a hostile work atmosphere that included racist slurs, caricatures and swastikas.
Tesla is dealing with a sequence of lawsuits involving alleged widespread race discrimination and sexual harassment on the Fremont manufacturing facility, together with one by a California civil rights company.
This month, a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit accusing the corporate’s CEO, Elon Musk, and board of administrators of neglecting employee complaints and fostering a poisonous office tradition.
Tesla has denied wrongdoing and says it has insurance policies in place to forestall and handle office misconduct.
Source: www.autonews.com
