Staggering! Tesla racism case award CUT to just $15 mn from $137 mn

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A federal judge cut to $15 million a staggering $137 million in damages awarded by a jury in a racial discrimination case against Tesla Inc. over abusive conduct toward a former elevator operator at its northern California factory.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in a ruling Wednesday he was compelled by legal principles to reduce the jury’s October verdict, but he also concluded there was ample “disturbing” evidence to support the outcome of the trial.

Jurors heard that the Tesla factory in Fremont “was saturated with racism,” Orrick wrote, adding that plaintiff Owen Diaz’s co-workers called him “the N-word and other slurs,” and that supervisors and Tesla’s broader management failed to help. “And supervisors even joined in on the abuse, one going so far as to threaten Diaz and draw a racist caricature near his workstation,” the judge said.

The jury’s award to Diaz after a seven-day trial in San Francisco is believed to be one of the largest in U.S. history for an individual plaintiff in a racial discrimination case. 

Tesla has faced a number of high-profile suits -- including one filed by the state of California in February -- over its treatment of Black employees and subcontracted workers at the Fremont factory.

At a January hearing on Tesla’s request for a new trial, Orrick said he was “troubled” that the $6.9 million jurors awarded as emotional distress damages “may be untethered to the distress to which Mr. Diaz and his witnesses testified.” Moreover, punitive damages of almost 20 times that amount are “extremely high,” the judge said. 

In his ruling, Orrick said “the highest award supported by the evidence” to compensate Diaz is $1.5 million. He cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings as the basis for his conclusion