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Tesla and lawyers for Owen Diaz, a former elevator operator at
the company's Fremont, California assembly plant, did not
disclose details of the settlement in the filing in San
Francisco federal court.
The agreement ends appeals that both sides were pursuing after a
jury last year awarded Diaz $3.2 million in damages. Tesla
claimed it was not liable for the alleged discrimination and
Diaz had argued that the company's lawyers engaged in misconduct
warranting a new trial.
A different jury in 2021 had awarded Diaz $137 million, one of
the largest verdicts ever in a discrimination case involving a
single worker. But a judge found that the verdict was excessive
and ordered a second trial after Diaz refused a lowered award of
$15 million.
Diaz, who first sued Tesla in 2017, claimed that when he worked
at the Fremont plant he was subjected on a daily basis to racial
slurs, scrawled swastikas and other racist conduct, and that
Tesla ignored his complaints.
Tesla and lawyers for Diaz did not immediately respond to
requests for comment. The company has said it does not tolerate
discrimination and has fired employees accused of racist
conduct.
Tesla faces similar claims of tolerating race bias at the
Fremont plant in a pending class action on behalf of 6,000
workers, separate cases from California and U.S. anti-bias
agencies, and multiple lawsuits involving individual employees.
The company has denied wrongdoing in those cases.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New YorkEditing by
Chris Reese, David Gregorio and Alexia Garamfalvi)
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