Tesla cars are seen at the V3 supercharger equipment during the presentation of the new charge system in the EUREF campus in Berlin, Germany, on September 10, 2020. File Photo / Reuters
California: Tesla Inc. says it would be unfair and unconstitutional to hold a retrial in a high-profile racial discrimination case by telling a new jury that company wrongdoing has already been proven and only monetary damages need to be decided.
Instead, the electric-car maker says that ex-contract worker Owen Diaz must start from scratch and prove to a new jury that it turned a blind eye while he was assailed with racial taunts and offensive graffiti at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California.
Diaz set the stage for a redo when he refused to accept $15m in damages after a judge slashed his original $137m jury award, believed to be the largest ever in an individual US plaintiff’s case over racial bias.
Tesla has faced numerous complaints and lawsuits from former workers at its Fremont factory about racial discrimination and sexual harassment in recent years. The company is fighting a case by California’s civil rights agency alleging a widespread pattern of mistreatment of Black workers at the plant.
Tesla said in a late Friday court filing that Diaz hasn’t responded to its proposal to hold a full retrial over both liability and damages. The company said the two sides have met several times to talk about the scope of a new trial and have disagreed over what evidence should be allowed.
The company’s lawyer, Kathleen Sullivan, argued that any decision by a new jury over how much to compensate Diaz for emotional distress, as well as what amount of punitive damages is appropriate, will turn on how frequently he was subjected to slurs, how often he complained to managers and how they responded.
Because damages and liability are impossible to separate in this case, Tesla would suffer a "constitutional injustice” if it doesn’t get a chance to challenge the underlying evidence for Diaz’s hostile work environment claim, Sullivan wrote.
"Tesla’s problem is that there’s no such thing as a motion to change the facts,” Michael Rubin, an attorney for Diaz, said in an email. "The first jury’s $137m verdict rested on extensive evidence that Tesla callously disregarded the pervasive racial harassment committed by its supervisors and others against Owen Diaz and other Black workers in Tesla’s Fremont factory, as the court already found in denying Tesla’s previous new trial motion.”
When Tesla challenged the original verdict, US District William Orrick concluded there was ample "disturbing” evidence to support the outcome of the trial, but also determined the jury’s damages award was too high.
A hearing on the matter is set for December 7.
