[HN Gopher] Tesla must pay ex-worker $15M for "disturbing" racis...
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Tesla must pay ex-worker $15M for "disturbing" racist abuse, judge
rules
Author : MBCook
Score : 45 points
Date : 2022-04-14 21:16 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _His supervisors and Tesla 's broader management structure did
| little or nothing to respond. And supervisors even joined in on
| the abuse, one going so far as to threaten Diaz and draw a racist
| caricature near his workstation._
|
| Do the supervisors not have any kind of personal liability in
| these cases?
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| Yeah, this is very strange to me. There was a case involving
| Cleveland Clinic where an Asian nurse's coworkers and
| supervisor were openly racist to her, and the case was straight
| up dismissed.
|
| https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-circuit/1767833.html
|
| > Plaintiff alleges that younger nurses called her an "oldbie"
| or "old bitch" and referred to rice she ate as "lice." (Lee
| Dep. R. #33-4 at 170) She asserts that one nurse stated, "you
| Chinese people eat anything that crawls and walks" and also
| stated that Plaintiff does not have "chinky eyes" even though
| she is Chinese. (Id.) In December 2013, Plaintiff reported the
| incident to a different supervisor, Debbie Brosovich
| ("Brosovich"), who responded that she was "overreacting" and
| being "sensitive."
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| they can potentially be charged with a hate crime
| nr2x wrote:
| So we know what type of content Elon wants on twitter now at
| least.
| eganist wrote:
| Down from a jury verdict of $136.9m, to be clear, on grounds that
| the initial judgment was excessive.
|
| Not sure I agree with that conclusion and would prefer to see
| companies permitting systemic racism absolutely thrashed in civil
| court not only to make an example but to make the cost of garbage
| treatment of workers higher than the cost of staying the course.
| 15 million, even once per year, isn't a disincentive because it
| easily costs more than that to change ways of working at any
| company.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think the PR damage is worse than the actual fine.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Really? You think that the PR cost is more than a super bowl
| commercial, 50 New York Times full page ads, and a few
| hundred million Facebook ad impressions combined?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's possible. It depends on how the thing is covered.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| MBCook wrote:
| It sounded like that was about as high as the judge could go
| based on the laws.
|
| However as the article mentioned this is not the only lawsuit
| for this kind of thing against Tesla. Maybe one verdict isn't
| enough but a couple of them might be.
| gnicholas wrote:
| IIRC from law school, there are constitutional limits on the
| ratio of punitive to compensatory damages, and 10:1 is roughly
| the limit.
|
| Based on the compensatory damages here, much larger punitive
| damages could have been held to be constitutional, but that
| would depend on the egregiousness and other factors.
|
| This will likely be appealed, so this isn't necessarily the end
| of the road. It's just the 'turn' card that reveals more
| information and positions the parties for new settlement
| discussions.
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(page generated 2022-04-14 23:02 UTC)