Tesla Ordered to Pay Worker $137M for Racism at Plant | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Ordered to Pay Worker $137M for Racism at Plant

bloomberg.com

49 pointshtrp66 comments

130 millions damage payment to ONE person? Is that not an insanely ridiculous amount? Such things are unimaginable in Europe or elsewhere.

how lucky we are as a civilization that technology has not yet made a similar punitive equation feasible for time as it is for money.

i.e., imagine if it worked this way for penalty of incarceration, where your mugger forfeits 10 years of their life, and transfers them to you, extending your own by the same amount - less attorneys' fees, of course.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

ONE corporation, will it notice?

Washington Post is saying it's $6.9M in emotional damages and $130M in punitive damages.

US Gov case info is here: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages

Basically, the amount is intended to set an example and prevent re-occurence.

There’s also a significant problem with a verdict creep, where juries set progressively higher punitive damages to set an example.

For example, damages for trucking accidents have grown substantially over the last decade. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/24/rise-in-nuclear-verdicts-in-...

This is a signal that the jury believes Tesla's people are remorseless and/or the violation was especially severe.

And if it obscenely hurts the company, they leave. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I support meaningful punishment of companies that have willfully, egregiously hostile work environments.

I don't think anyone disagrees about that point.

Punishments must be in-line with the evidence. Otherwise you are wrongfully hurting more people. How does that do any good?

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. A jury weighed the evidence—evidence which no one on this forum has seen—and awarded this amount.

There are numerous articles that elaborate on evidence. The bloomberg article linked has some, as does a tesla link above. It's worth a read if you haven't read much about this case yet.

The legal system was not designed to neutralize the damages. The legal system has been designed to neutralize the damages and leverage scapegoating to deter future cases. e.g. in this case the jury is basically telling Tesla “… is very not profitable. It is your fiduciary responsibility to investors to ensure this never happens again.”

You might disagree with that design of the courts, but changing how the US legal system works is more than a lot difficult.

If you do take on this challenge, I would suggest starting with helping reduce punishments for individuals before focusing on reducing the punishment for corporations. Hopefully the same strategies for change will “help” both situations.

Where would they move to be out of the jurisdiction of a federal court? This wasn't a state level lawsuit.

It was brought to a San Francisco court because the incident happened in Fremont (just a handful of miles away).

In federal court.

This should be obvious, but not all federal courts are the same.

For a good example of a federal court gone rogue, look at east texas: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/supreme-court-ma...

This is like the hot coffee lady. The purpose for the large fine is to punish the company and prevent them from being able to just carry on as they were with a small amount set aside for lawsuits.

The hot coffee lady wound up in hospital with severe burns. McDonald's had a pattern of overheating coffee to disguise poor taste and they continued it knowing they had seriously injured multiple customers.

In this instance a factory worker seems to have have overheard bad language and seen it on graffiti in the bathroom. Pretty different.

The OP still shouldn't be getting downvoted because they're right: she was only seeking $20,000 to cover medical bills for treatment of severe burns originally, in the course of the case McDonalds decided to go on a media campaign about it against her (and succeeded) but during the course of the case got demolished by the prosecution who conclusively showed that they were aware of the danger, had injured others, and had no justifiable reason for preparing the product the way they did.

The final settlement was - as the OP notes - about punitive damages, which they very much deserved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

Ironic! This is exactly like the hot coffee lady. You, and almost everyone else, is going to read Tesla's interpretation and assume the judgement is overboard without ever reading the complaint. Actually, that's exactly what all of the current comments on here are circling towards. Turns out Facebook isn't the only place with rampant misinformation.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.31...

I read the factual allegations and skimmed the rest. Thanks for posting this link.

No part of this seems as bad as being scalded and hospitalized. No part of this suggests a harmful or intentional corporate policy, like McDonald's superheating their coffee.

The allegation doesn't address a major point from Tesla's blog post, which is that the men involved were black. What I took from Tesla's post is that it was mostly (or entirely) black men referring to each other with racial slurs.

The factual allegations make it seem like some factory workers used bad/racist language and racist cartoons. Mid level HR types ignored some complaints. Does Tesla have a policy of ignoring or encouraging racist behavior? Or is it just some people failing to do something about reported harassment?

It's tough to say without being there but this isn't the first lawsuit nor is it the first blog post on racism in the factory.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/hotbed-misinformation

Jury awards to individuals against corporations have been skyrocketing over the last decade or so. In the insurance industry it's referred to as "social inflation" and is a pretty hot topic right now. People in the industry were shocked by a record $411 million award last October [0], only for that record to be shattered by a $1 billion award not even a year later [1].

My pet theory is that it's mostly driven by attitudes that corporations have too much power coupled with increased inaction by the government entities that could be addressing all of that corporate power. An increase in litigation financing is probably a big factor too.

There's lots of firmer legal analysis out there by people who, unlike me, are actually qualified to perform that analysis (e.g. [2]). Naturally it's all somewhat speculative, but there are some interesting solid-ish statistics, for example:

> A national survey conducted by Sound Jury Consulting in 2019 found three-quarters of respondents eligible for jury service stated they would decide a case based on their own personal beliefs of right or wrong if those beliefs conflicted with the law as instructed by the judge. The number is higher for millennials.

[0] https://cdllife.com/2020/single-truck-company-slapped-with-n...

[1] https://www.thetrucker.com/trucking-news/the-nation/inside-a...

[2] https://www.hinshawlaw.com/assets/htmldocuments/Articles/The...

Tesla is worth almost $800B dollars. This award won’t cause a blip in their culture or working conditions.

Sounds like the story is very fishy, maybe some money laundering

Tesla's POV:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/regarding-todays-jury-verdict

The Plaintiff's POV:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.31...

tl;dr Tesla gas lit the dude

and Tesla's previous blog post on factory racism.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/hotbed-misinformation

Sounds like they intend to pay. I'm surprised. I'd fight it if those are the actual facts as seen from their end. But I suppose the veracity is an issue no matter which side you listen to.

Shit, time to start recording interactions with everyone, I guess. Would've gotten enough evidence for a bunch of cases over the past 6 months alone lol

Were you being abused for your skin colour? Your religion? Your sexuality? Your age? Were you abused by your supervisor? Did their mgmt chain minimize the harm this did, or did they tell you to suck it up or you've never make it in the big leagues? Did you eventually make it in the big leagues?

I'd love to know the algorithm used to arrive at this amount of money, because it seems quite large to me, but I'm very happy to see any company that countenances this sort of nonsense hurt financially. Big companies are not your friend. They're not your enemy. They're just doing what they think they need to. If safeguarding profits requires that they _actually_ enforce rules about racist abuse, then by all means, sue them 'til the pips squeak. LOL.

https://archive.is/aKlPN

What is the job function of an elevator operator in a fully automated manufacturing facility?

> What is the job function of an elevator operator in a fully automated manufacturing facility?

It's Tesla after all - fully automated manufacturing facility doesn't mean a human isn't needed to operate. Just like Tesla's fully automated driving doesn't mean a human isn't expected to be at the wheel.

For that kind of money I think we're going to be seeing a lot more employees accuse their employers of racism.

At least among those that can land a jury in San Francisco.

I assume they will have to provide proof that the company ignored these issues.

it's a deterrent. you know, just like the death penalty that some states of the country in which most of the readers here reside.

Throwaway for obvious reasons, but you could say pretty much anything you want to me for that kind of paycheck. Too bad there's nothing you could say to a white guy that would let me cash in like that.

Sexual harassment.

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