Is Owen Diaz greedy? This former Tesla employee loses $15 million for just $3 million after winning a lawsuit.
Elon Musk and his company, Tesla will pay about $3.2m to a Black former employee after a federal jury in San Francisco ruled the electric-vehicle maker failed to prevent severe racial harassment at its flagship assembly plant in California.
The amount is far less than the $15m that the plaintiff, Owen Diaz, rejected last year in opting for a new trial. Diaz asked for a new trial on damages after the judge reduced the amount he was awarded in a 2021 ruling from $137m to $15m. Diaz accused Tesla of failing to act when he repeatedly complained to managers that employees at the Fremont factory frequently used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures, and epithets on walls and work areas.
Tesla’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, countered that Diaz was a confrontational worker who had exaggerated his claims of emotional distress, and said his lawyers failed to show any serious, long-lasting damage caused by Tesla.
The jury on Monday awarded him $175,000 in damages for emotional distress and $3m in punitive damages designed to punish unlawful conduct and deter it in the future.
About Owen Diaz’s fortune: Owen Diaz, the Black former elevator operator at Tesla’s Fremont factory, has seen his payout in a racial bias lawsuit slashed from $15 million to $3.2 million. For now, Owen Daiz has an estimated net worth of $3.2 million.