A court sitting in San Francisco has ordered electric car company, Tesla to pay nearly $3.2 million to a former contract worker who claimed he was subjected to racist abuse while working at the company’s Fremont, California, plant.
According to DailyMail, the court ordered Tesla to pay $3 million in punitive damages and $175,000 in non-economic damages to Owen Diaz, who worked as a contracted lift operator at the electric vehicle maker’s Fremont plant in 2015 and 2016 before quitting.
Diaz claimed that during his time at Tesla, he was regularly harassed with racial slurs.
Diaz claimed in a lawsuit that employees left racist graffiti and drawings around the plant and his superiors did nothing to stop the abuse.
The nearly $3.2 million award is far less than what Diaz was awarded in 2021, when a different San Francisco court agreed that Diaz was subjected to racist harassment and a hostile work environment at the Fremont plant, ordering Tesla to pay nearly $137 million.
However, US District Judge William Orrick ruled that the $137 million settlement was excessive, and instead awarded Diaz a much lower award of $15 million in damages.