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Comment by ipspam | Hacker News Reader

$137 million? That's a lesson. Don't do business in California.

Well, it could also be about not being racist

Most of the award is punitive damages, and it’ll (edit: probably) be California law under which they’re dramatically reduced by the judge.

The article indicated it was a federal trial. California laws would not be a factor.

State law claims are tried in federal courts all the time under subject matter jurisdiction and joinder rules. Both state and federal claims are probably at issue here. PACER would yield the answer.

A San Francisco judge heard the case because this happened in Fremont (just a handful of miles away).

So OP's point still applies.

So calling your employees the n-word is ok in Texas?

There's a world of difference between thinking this is okay and thinking that 137 million dollars for facing racist insults and graffiti is appropriate. For context, a worker who was cooked to death in a Tuna processing facility was awarded the largest wrongful death settlement in California of 6 million dollars.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/12/bumble-bee-f...

In some European countries you get fined based on your income. So if a billionaire is caught speeding he can get a speeding ticket for millions of dollars.

This isn't about him. It's about the company the proved negligent. Had the amount been lower they would have just moved on and added it as "the cost of doing business". The Jury did this strictly for punishment. They also want other companies to see this verdict, settle and get their act together. It was 2015 and an employee complains about sexual harassment or racism... You should have listened. At least you will from now on. This is on Tesla.

All the $137M award says is the Jury found itself really pissed off at Tesla. It's basically a notice that Tesla might consider settling these types of claims in the future instead of wasting the Jury's time.

Or they will keep handling these claims the way they always have: they go to mandatory arbitration which either decides it is not racism or awards the claimant a small amount, and in either case Tesla doesn't take any serious action to prevent future occurrences.

This one only went through the courts instead of arbitration because it involved someone who they did not have under an arbitration agreement.

I'm not sure why they did not have an arbitration agreement. The person was a contract worker employed by a staffing agency rather than directly employed by Tesla, so maybe Tesla thought for some reason that would protect them?

I find this the most reasonable answer to my comment.

So whats an appropriate amount for a company to pay out when a coworker is called the n-word repeatedly and the company opts to turn a blind eye?

How will the poor multibillionaires survive if they can't abuse their employees :(

This guy says the people he worked with called him racist names and he saw racist graffiti in the bathroom. It's not like Elon Musk was burning a cross on his lawn.

Rather than worry about the billionaires you might worry how companies will do business if they are subject to massive penalties for racist word use among their employees. "Hey boss, wanna call me racist names for a bit, write some in the bathroom, and split a hundred million?"

The question isn't is it okay. The question is: is it $137mm okay.

Objectively, is it a $137m offense?

Courts seem to believe so? So yeah?

How much do you think it should cost a company when a company allows blatantly racist behavior in the workplace and does nothing about it?

Most likely this is a hoax like all the other fake “hate crimes” or recent years

e.g. that story with a “noose” in the garage or black students writing racist graffiti on campus

Some do it for attention, others for financial gain

https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/29354447/fbi-s...

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/black-student-...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hoax-missouri-school-distri...

Do you assume that neither Tesla nor the court did due diligence in confirming the allegations before bringing this to court?

These things are easy to fake and hard to disprove, especially in the current political climate

It was a federal trial.

The ruling happened in a federal court.

Punitive damages exist in every state, and exist because without them corporations are able to simply budget in the cost of breaking the law. That's why the McDonalds hot coffee incident was so large (they were breaking the law, the woman originally only sued for the few thousand in health insurance copays, the bulk of the fine was because McDs had had the same law suits with different people multiple times but continued to break the law)

Businesses and any productive individuals for that matter can't move fast enough out of this cesspool.

You look a wrong way and someone's gonna pull a race card on you, happily assisted by the closest ambulance chaser.

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