After a jury granted him $3.2 million in a race prejudice case, a Black former Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) manufacturing worker accused the electric automaker’s attorneys of “egregious misconduct” and requested a third trial to obtain additional money.
In a filing in San Francisco federal court late Tuesday, plaintiff Owen Diaz’s lawyers alleged Tesla’s lawyers posed inappropriate questions, baselessly accused a witness of lying, and made deceptive claims during closing arguments in March’s five-day trial.
In 2021, a separate jury awarded Diaz $137 million for claimed systemic racial discrimination at Tesla’s flagship Fremont, California, assembly facility. After Diaz rejected a $15 million damages verdict, the court ordered a second trial.
The judge prevented both parties from submitting new evidence or testimony at the retrial. On Tuesday, Diaz’s attorneys argued Tesla’s legal team inappropriately questioned him and other witnesses about alleged instances, which Diaz denies, where he insulted a coworker as a “dumb Mexican” and sexually harassed female workers, which did not come up in the 2021 trial.
“There is no other explanation for the extraordinary gap between the first and second jury’s damages verdicts,” his attorneys said.
Diaz renewed a similar move for a mistrial, which the court had dismissed during the retrial.
Tesla filed a supplementary petition to reduce the verdict to $1.6 million, arguing that the jury’s $3 million punitive damages decision was too high given Diaz’s $175,000 emotional distress award. The U.S. Supreme Court limits punitive damages to nine times other damages.
Tesla and Diaz’s lawyers did not reply to Wednesday’s demands for comment. July 19 is the motions hearing.
Diaz sued Tesla in 2017 for failing to act after he regularly reported to supervisors that employees used racial insults and scribbled swastikas, racist caricatures, and epithets on walls and workspaces.
Tesla says it takes worker concerns about discrimination seriously.
In other instances, the business denies racial or sexual harassment at assembly facilities and service centers.
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