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Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. I'll go ahead and say that if no important detail is left out of the story, 137 milli

Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. I'll go ahead and say that if no important detail is left out of the story, 137 millions being awarded for verbal abuse during 1 year of employment is insane and clearly shows why the company has mandatory arbitration agreements.

yosito 5y ago
[deleted because no one seems capable of having a good faith discussion about this]
- josefx 5y ago
  > verbal abuse and bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin Tesla claims to have a zero tolerance policy in place, so that excuse doesn't work for long term harassment. They basically admitted to a complete enforcement failure of their own policies. So the question is if Teslas management is that incompetent or racist and why their meme lord in charge hasn't done anything to fix the issue (outside of forced arbitration to silence workers).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  > bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin against by our late teens You'd expect to see this at a public toilet, etched into school furniture, or at the urinal at a dive bar, but this has a totally different vibe in a workplace where everyone is being paid to be there, and colleagues need to trust each other. The 137 million payout does seem extreme, but it's probably just adequate to incentivize a company with the turnover of Tesla to improve its policies (and outcomes).
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    I'm tired of people expecting me to just take it when it comes to racism. No. You're going to fuck around and find out. As did Tesla. Don't expect me to develop a thick skin. The person paying $137 mil can do that.
  - nasmorn 5y ago
    I am not black but if I go to the office bathroom and it has a racist graffiti there I am at HR right after washing my hands. Who wants to work at a place where that is tolerated?
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Isn’t that a task for office cleaning services? If HR can’t install cameras in a bathroom stall, or remove the stall door, how are they going to police graffiti at all? The reason kids do it there is because they can get away with it. HR could send out a strongly worded email, but I don’t see any real action beyond upping bathroom cleaning checks.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- hjuoygjkghu 5y ago
  The important detail left out is that this was a San Francisco court.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    Why is that important?
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  No one should have to have a 'tough skin' about things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like. They simply shouldn't be in the workplace. Period.
  - yosito 5y ago
    That's not what I said.
  - staysafeanon 5y ago
    Everyone should have a 'tough skin' when anything and everything becomes racist, sexist, homophobic, and the like.
jmeister 5y ago
People like me are just speechless at the absolute reductio-ad-absurdum State of Affairs in These United States.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Sorry guys - flag this if you will - this is what it looks like seen from any other place on the planet. The US has a lot of stuff going for it, just not its legal system wrt. race and jury awarded payouts.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    Yeah I agree. It doesn't do anywhere nearly enough.
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      From an outside perspective: On one hand the US keeps a large portion of its black male population in prison, on the other hand there are these random stories of huge payouts to people who suffered the right form of racism under the right circumstances. A tradition of an activist form of "lawfare" that escalates tensions rather than cooling them off.
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        Lawyers are paid in both scenarios.
ChainOfFools 5y ago
this is to punish the company, right? 137MM seems like a reasonably sized pain signal that can be felt, remembered, and positively reacted to by an operation the size of Tesla. but if this fine is for a systemic widespread problem, then there must have been many victims. why does the entire fine go to just one of them?
sandworm101 5y ago
Large? Excessive? Yes. Insane? No. The system isn't just about compensation. The amount needs to be high enough to actually influence the wrongdoer, to dissuade repeat behavior. Maybe this jury thought this the smallest number that would cause Tesla to make actual changes to its workplace. I do chuckle at how much money from each subsequent tesla sale will be going to pay down this lawsuit. 127mil / 500k = 254$ per car for a year. Given the price of a new Tesla that doesn't actually seem very big, and will certainly be reduced on appeal.
- killtimeatwork 5y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that crime/misdemeanor deterrence is a duty of the criminal law, while civil law is only about righting the wrongs of specific people/legal entities. In any case, I'd LOVE to go through whatever the guy came through in exchange for just $1m (a completely life-changing amount of money for me), let alone $137m... These verdicts ARE insane.
- jollybean 5y ago
  It's completely insane, full stop. What this will 'incentivize' is absolutely everyone suing their employer, right now, for discrimination of some kind. Being called some choice things is bad, but there are worse things that happen in this world, particularly in the area of safety. The damages need to be commensurate with the actions, not some kind of incentive driven thing.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  It just pursuades the wrongdoer to enforce mandatory arbitration agreements.
  - rambambram 5y ago
    I don't know the applicable US law, but there might be a difference between mandatory arbitration and civil law suits on one hand, and criminal law on the other. It couldn't be that you sign something with a company, and that contract also means police can't do shit about shit. I guess racism is part of criminal law? And besides, it is really easy to not be racist.
nwiswell 5y ago
These jury awards are usually reduced at appeal. Some examples: https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1UA2CH https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1UA2CH https://www.morellilaw.com/the-biggest-injury-verdict-reductions-of-2020/ https://www.morellilaw.com/the-biggest-injury-verdict-reduct...
janmo 5y ago
> Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. In all fairness it was not on the HN main page the first 3 hours, see: https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/28755257 https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/28755257
zd123 5y ago
Who says its insane? I think its entirely reasonable given the size of the company. I mean they have arbitration agreements which caused the abuse to get this bad, not the other way around.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  It is insane compared to how workers that has been maimed physically at Tesla plants have been compensated. The courts could have put this money into a accidents found or a orphanage or what ever.
jb1991 5y ago
You are conflating punishment with deterrence. Penalties are never about just one of these things.
piokoch 5y ago
Yup, this ruling looks strange. Why Tesla has to pay because some morons were telling racist jokes? I think this guy should sue those who were offending him, not the company. I guess many people think that the law has been stretched here too far, but prefer not to comment as this could be considered "racist".
- vkou 5y ago
  > Why Tesla has to pay because some morons were telling racist jokes? Because in the United States, it is the responsibility of those morons' manager to discipline them for that kind of behaviour (And the responsibility of his manager to discipline him, if he fails to do so, and so on, and so on up the chain.) If the manager had done so this would have far more likely been a $0 settlement, rather than a $137M one. The company, instead, chose to protect those racist morons, rather than protect the plaintiff. Now it's discovering why this is not a smart corporate behaviour, and why it should not repeat it in the future.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  It’s the companies responsibility to ensure their own workplace is legal to work in. If a manager insists on violating OSHA, that’s the company’s problem for not firing the manager, because it meant the company isn’t taking OSHA seriously and even if this manager is sued personally the company has no incentive to prevent future unsafe workplaces.
vkou 5y ago
It's not insane, it's a deterrent for future misbehavior. Maybe now, Tesla's shareholders will consider making adult supervision a priority at the firm. If the one time you catch a shoplifter, the only punishment he'd get is having to pay for the item, every single person entering a store would start stealing.
makeitdouble 5y ago
Without any further details, the 137 millions is basically a bait to raise reactions. A ton of it will evaporate before reaching the plaintiff. A huge part must be punitive damage for Tesla, and they'll appeal and some court in the middle with play the "poor poor Tesla" song and slash it to nothing. Then the plaintiff will still have been in the news for these 137 millions, be paraded as some abuser of the system, while having been abused for one year, losing their job and getting mostly nothing out of the whole thing. That makes me wish Tesla would have to actually pay and the guy runs away with these 137 millions that are just a drop in the bucket for Tesla and won't be in our pockets either way. Just let him have his money, it's not like he's an enemy of humanity or 20 thousand copycats will try to get abused in the elevator for a year.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arp242 5y ago
What I find more "insane" than anything else is that the company Tesla is being put on trail here, rather than the individuals committing these acts. You could argue that the "Tesla company" was responsible for creating and/or tolerating such a work environment, but in the end, that's still one or more individuals making decisions to do so. That is, Jack the factory floor worker called Diaz a nigger, and Alice the manager decided to shrug it off. I'm not advocating putting these people on trail for $137 million, or even having them lose their jobs for that matter (I don't care much for these kind of "vengeance actions"), but I do wish these was more personal accountability and responsibility in these sort of things, instead of diffusing it to some inhuman company.
afarrell 5y ago
> Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. Because wise people have humility about their ability to communicate clearly with strangers about trauma-related topics.

yosito 5y ago

[deleted because no one seems capable of having a good faith discussion about this]

josefx 5y ago
> verbal abuse and bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin Tesla claims to have a zero tolerance policy in place, so that excuse doesn't work for long term harassment. They basically admitted to a complete enforcement failure of their own policies. So the question is if Teslas management is that incompetent or racist and why their meme lord in charge hasn't done anything to fix the issue (outside of forced arbitration to silence workers).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
h0l0cube 5y ago
> bathroom grafiti, which most of us developed thick skin against by our late teens You'd expect to see this at a public toilet, etched into school furniture, or at the urinal at a dive bar, but this has a totally different vibe in a workplace where everyone is being paid to be there, and colleagues need to trust each other. The 137 million payout does seem extreme, but it's probably just adequate to incentivize a company with the turnover of Tesla to improve its policies (and outcomes).
- aaomidi 5y ago
  I'm tired of people expecting me to just take it when it comes to racism. No. You're going to fuck around and find out. As did Tesla. Don't expect me to develop a thick skin. The person paying $137 mil can do that.
- nasmorn 5y ago
  I am not black but if I go to the office bathroom and it has a racist graffiti there I am at HR right after washing my hands. Who wants to work at a place where that is tolerated?
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Isn’t that a task for office cleaning services? If HR can’t install cameras in a bathroom stall, or remove the stall door, how are they going to police graffiti at all? The reason kids do it there is because they can get away with it. HR could send out a strongly worded email, but I don’t see any real action beyond upping bathroom cleaning checks.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
hjuoygjkghu 5y ago
The important detail left out is that this was a San Francisco court.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  Why is that important?
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
No one should have to have a 'tough skin' about things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like. They simply shouldn't be in the workplace. Period.
- yosito 5y ago
  That's not what I said.
- staysafeanon 5y ago
  Everyone should have a 'tough skin' when anything and everything becomes racist, sexist, homophobic, and the like.

jmeister 5y ago

People like me are just speechless at the absolute reductio-ad-absurdum State of Affairs in These United States.

throwaway4good 5y ago
Sorry guys - flag this if you will - this is what it looks like seen from any other place on the planet. The US has a lot of stuff going for it, just not its legal system wrt. race and jury awarded payouts.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Yeah I agree. It doesn't do anywhere nearly enough.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    From an outside perspective: On one hand the US keeps a large portion of its black male population in prison, on the other hand there are these random stories of huge payouts to people who suffered the right form of racism under the right circumstances. A tradition of an activist form of "lawfare" that escalates tensions rather than cooling them off.
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      Lawyers are paid in both scenarios.

ChainOfFools 5y ago

this is to punish the company, right? 137MM seems like a reasonably sized pain signal that can be felt, remembered, and positively reacted to by an operation the size of Tesla. but if this fine is for a systemic widespread problem, then there must have been many victims. why does the entire fine go to just one of them?

sandworm101 5y ago

Large? Excessive? Yes. Insane? No. The system isn't just about compensation. The amount needs to be high enough to actually influence the wrongdoer, to dissuade repeat behavior. Maybe this jury thought this the smallest number that would cause Tesla to make actual changes to its workplace. I do chuckle at how much money from each subsequent tesla sale will be going to pay down this lawsuit. 127mil / 500k = 254$ per car for a year. Given the price of a new Tesla that doesn't actually seem very big, and will certainly be reduced on appeal.

killtimeatwork 5y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that crime/misdemeanor deterrence is a duty of the criminal law, while civil law is only about righting the wrongs of specific people/legal entities. In any case, I'd LOVE to go through whatever the guy came through in exchange for just $1m (a completely life-changing amount of money for me), let alone $137m... These verdicts ARE insane.
jollybean 5y ago
It's completely insane, full stop. What this will 'incentivize' is absolutely everyone suing their employer, right now, for discrimination of some kind. Being called some choice things is bad, but there are worse things that happen in this world, particularly in the area of safety. The damages need to be commensurate with the actions, not some kind of incentive driven thing.
throwaway4good 5y ago
It just pursuades the wrongdoer to enforce mandatory arbitration agreements.
- rambambram 5y ago
  I don't know the applicable US law, but there might be a difference between mandatory arbitration and civil law suits on one hand, and criminal law on the other. It couldn't be that you sign something with a company, and that contract also means police can't do shit about shit. I guess racism is part of criminal law? And besides, it is really easy to not be racist.

nwiswell 5y ago

These jury awards are usually reduced at appeal. Some examples: https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1UA2CH https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1UA2CH https://www.morellilaw.com/the-biggest-injury-verdict-reductions-of-2020/ https://www.morellilaw.com/the-biggest-injury-verdict-reduct...

janmo 5y ago

> Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. In all fairness it was not on the HN main page the first 3 hours, see: https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/28755257 https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/28755257

zd123 5y ago

Who says its insane? I think its entirely reasonable given the size of the company. I mean they have arbitration agreements which caused the abuse to get this bad, not the other way around.

rightbyte 5y ago
It is insane compared to how workers that has been maimed physically at Tesla plants have been compensated. The courts could have put this money into a accidents found or a orphanage or what ever.

jb1991 5y ago

You are conflating punishment with deterrence. Penalties are never about just one of these things.

piokoch 5y ago

Yup, this ruling looks strange. Why Tesla has to pay because some morons were telling racist jokes? I think this guy should sue those who were offending him, not the company. I guess many people think that the law has been stretched here too far, but prefer not to comment as this could be considered "racist".

vkou 5y ago
> Why Tesla has to pay because some morons were telling racist jokes? Because in the United States, it is the responsibility of those morons' manager to discipline them for that kind of behaviour (And the responsibility of his manager to discipline him, if he fails to do so, and so on, and so on up the chain.) If the manager had done so this would have far more likely been a $0 settlement, rather than a $137M one. The company, instead, chose to protect those racist morons, rather than protect the plaintiff. Now it's discovering why this is not a smart corporate behaviour, and why it should not repeat it in the future.
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
It’s the companies responsibility to ensure their own workplace is legal to work in. If a manager insists on violating OSHA, that’s the company’s problem for not firing the manager, because it meant the company isn’t taking OSHA seriously and even if this manager is sued personally the company has no incentive to prevent future unsafe workplaces.

vkou 5y ago

It's not insane, it's a deterrent for future misbehavior. Maybe now, Tesla's shareholders will consider making adult supervision a priority at the firm. If the one time you catch a shoplifter, the only punishment he'd get is having to pay for the item, every single person entering a store would start stealing.

makeitdouble 5y ago

Without any further details, the 137 millions is basically a bait to raise reactions. A ton of it will evaporate before reaching the plaintiff. A huge part must be punitive damage for Tesla, and they'll appeal and some court in the middle with play the "poor poor Tesla" song and slash it to nothing. Then the plaintiff will still have been in the news for these 137 millions, be paraded as some abuser of the system, while having been abused for one year, losing their job and getting mostly nothing out of the whole thing. That makes me wish Tesla would have to actually pay and the guy runs away with these 137 millions that are just a drop in the bucket for Tesla and won't be in our pockets either way. Just let him have his money, it's not like he's an enemy of humanity or 20 thousand copycats will try to get abused in the elevator for a year.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arp242 5y ago

What I find more "insane" than anything else is that the company Tesla is being put on trail here, rather than the individuals committing these acts. You could argue that the "Tesla company" was responsible for creating and/or tolerating such a work environment, but in the end, that's still one or more individuals making decisions to do so. That is, Jack the factory floor worker called Diaz a nigger, and Alice the manager decided to shrug it off. I'm not advocating putting these people on trail for $137 million, or even having them lose their jobs for that matter (I don't care much for these kind of "vengeance actions"), but I do wish these was more personal accountability and responsibility in these sort of things, instead of diffusing it to some inhuman company.

afarrell 5y ago

> Nobody wants to touch this story with a comment in 3 hours? I wonder why. Because wise people have humility about their ability to communicate clearly with strangers about trauma-related topics.