The Jury Has Spoken: Tesla Liable for $136.9 Million in Individual Race Harassment Case

Owen Diaz was vindicated after fighting back against the appalling racial harassment he endured at the hands of Tesla. He won a resounding victory this month when a jury awarded him $136.9 million, including an enormous $130 million in punitive damages. This verdict is one of the largest of its kind.

Mr. Diaz, who is African-American, worked at Tesla‘s Fremont factory as an elevator operator. Supervisors accosted him using racial epithets frequently, including the N-word, and Mr. Diaz found racist caricatures and swastikas written in the factory and bathrooms. Mr. Diaz complained to management, which did nothing. Dismayed but undeterred, Mr. Diaz courageously stood up to Tesla’s behavior “straight from the Jim Crow era and filed a lawsuit against Tesla.

Tesla fiercely litigated against Mr. Diaz over the four years that followed, but Mr. Diaz prevailed. Tesla argued that even though Mr. Diaz worked at Tesla, followed Tesla workers’ instructions, and earned a rate of pay set by Tesla, that it somehow had no responsibility to prevent the awful treatment he and other African-American workers at the Fremont Tesla factory endured. The jury did not fall for it.

Tesla also argued that Mr. Diaz had not shown any evidence of race discrimination, but the jury saw through that ruse. At one illustrative point in the trial proceedings, Tesla’s attorney asked a witness if the N-word was used in the workplace. After the witness confirmed it was, Tesla’s attorney asked if the epithet was used in a friendly way, completely failing to recognize that such degrading language has no place in any workplace, in any context, for any reason. The evidence of race discrimination at Tesla was so overwhelming that the jury returned an unprecedented verdict with $130 million in punitive damages, finding that Tesla intentionally violated the law.

Tesla forces most employees to sign arbitration agreements, which prevents them from coming together to hold Tesla accountable for its discriminatory treatment and veils in secrecy much of Tesla’s unlawful employment practices. Thanks to Mr. Diaz’s courage, Tesla is at last being held accountable publicly and by the community for its disgraceful and unlawful actions.

Whether Tesla’s expensive loss prompts corporate changes is yet to be determined; as Bryan Schwartz Law previously wrote, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that it was “worth it” to intentionally violate securities law and incur a $20 million fine, and he unlawfully threatened employees with a loss of stock options if they chose to unionize. Hopefully, this verdict pushes Tesla to begin to treat its workers with fairness and respect.

Tesla’s disdain for the employees on which it relies – particularly its non-white employees – is familiar to Bryan Schwartz Law. Bryan Schwartz Law has been litigating against Tesla in a race discrimination class action lawsuit, along with co-counsel the California Civil Rights Law Group, which also represents Mr. Diaz. If you have been the subject of race discrimination at Tesla, please contact Bryan Schwartz Law.

NLRB Slaps Back Elon Musk for Union Busting Tweet

Tesla landed itself back in the news last week for yet another dose of negative publicity, courtesy of the quick-tweeting trigger finger of its CEO, Elon Musk. This time, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) found Musk to have threatened employees with a loss of stock options if they chose to be represented by the United Auto Workers labor union. The 2018 tweet in question read: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.”

Musk’s social media usage has already gotten Tesla into tens of millions of dollars of trouble. His tweet that he was considering taking Tesla private led to artificial investment in Tesla stock, even though the tweet had no basis in fact. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined him and Tesla each $20 million. Musk later said the penalty was “worth it,” speaking volumes about the weakness of the regulatory scheme that is meant to protect against the ultra-wealthy’s abuses of power.

Last week’s NLRB decision represents another agency’s attempt to rein in Musk’s unlawful social media posts. The NLRB ordered Musk and Tesla to stop threatening employees for supporting labor efforts, delete the tweet, place a notice regarding unfair labor practices at the Fremont plant, and place notices about the tweet in all Tesla facilities nationwide. The NLRB decision also reinstated with backpay a Tesla employee who was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for his union activities. Neither Tesla nor Musk will be faced with any penalties other than the employee’s backpay.

Bryan Schwartz Law is no stranger to Tesla and Musk’s unlawful workplace ethos. Since 2017, BSL has been litigating a case against Tesla concerning appalling race harassment at its Fremont factory. The NLRB decision is a positive development for workers, hopefully the start of many changes at the Tesla workplace to protect employees from abuses.

If you have experienced retaliation or discrimination at Tesla, contact Bryan Schwartz Law.

White Silence is Violence

Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Christian Cooper. George Floyd. David McAtee.

The lasting power of white supremacy is once again on full display. All of us – especially those benefiting from a legacy of white privilege – have an obligation to end this reign of terror. As civil rights lawyers, we at Bryan Schwartz Law feel a special duty to respond.

Our work as lawyers hinges on a core belief in the rule of law and the power of the law to organize society in a way that protects and provides for its people. The events of the past weeks are a painful reminder that the rule of law is not evenly applied. Yesterday, the president ordered police to tear gas protestors at the White House so that he could get a photo holding a bible in front of a church (whose bishop, by the way, was not warned of nor condoned his visit). When police and other government actors contribute to the abrogation of vital protections (like our First Amendment freedoms of speech, association, and assembly, and anti-discrimination laws) or selectively enforce laws as a way to subjugate people, we as lawyers have an obligation to step in and push our legal system to correct course.

That includes intervening in every sphere of life where white supremacy is present, including employment. While California is home to some of the most progressive employment laws in the nation, there is also a seemingly endless stream of cases of Black employees being denigrated and abused in the workplace, one of which is our class-action race discrimination and harassment case against Tesla.

When clients first come to us, their faith in the law has generally been shaken. They have been wronged; their rights have been violated. It is a special duty and honor to be able to say, we hear you, we are with you, we will stand beside you, and we will fight for you.

And so today we say: Black Lives Matter and fight white supremacy. The struggle for racial justice is real and it is long. We will continue to lend our talents and treasures to the struggle to defeat racism in all its forms.