Coming after Diaz v Tesla [1] where Tesla was found guilty of racial harassment and discrimination in that same Fremont, California plant (as can be seen here on page 3-11 [2]) to a degree that the jury deemed it worthy of a $136.9 million award, the single largest award in a race harassment case in American history [2]. That award was later reduced for procedural reasons as it was beyond the maximum limit the law allows. And further reduced in a subsequent trial evaluating direct damages due to emotional distress and loss of work which, as a matter of law, restricted the maximum allowable punitive damages. Despite that, the jury found it necessary to award punitive damages in excess of the standard maximum of 9:1 [4] which was upheld by the courts as, in the words of the judge: "Tesla’s conduct was reprehensible and repeated"[5] and as such the award in excess of standard maximums was "appropriate in light of the endemic racism at the Tesla factory and Tesla’s repeated failure to rectify it"[6].
A decade ago, citing sources in an online debate was considered normal. I think we should bring that back. If you cite sources, it's harder to lie, and you have to do at least a little bit of research before posting. It leads to much better discourse, IMO.
fake damage rewards are designed to benefit corps so they can cause public outrage in their favor while in reality paying a small fraction due to payout limitations.
American civil courts having juries for no good reason is the issue. Nobody anywhere else in the world still uses juries for civil trials and for this sort of reason.
Damages are compensatory. Allowing a jury to pluck 9-digit numbers from thin air to be reduced later is stupid.
No,compensatory damages are compensatory. Statutory and exemplary/punitive damages are not compensatory
> Allowing a jury to pluck 9-digit numbers from thin air to be reduced later is stupid.
tory.
Juries aren't allowed to pick numbers out of the air; on compensatory damages, as the finder of fact, the jury performs the same function as a criminal jury, it determines what facts were proven to the required standard, including the amount of harm proven.
I was on a civil jury a while ago and it was pretty eye opening how the process actually works. I'd say about half of the court time was dedicated to arguments about proving specific damages and ultimately the result was that the jury found in favor of the plaintiff but awarded a much lower damage amount than they were asking for specifically because they failed to prove that amount of harm. The idea of juries plucking random numbers of out thin air doesn't even remotely match my experience, or reality based on conversations I've had with lawyers I know.
> Allowing a jury to pluck 9-digit numbers from thin air to be reduced later is stupid.
That's not how civil jury trials work. Not only are juries specifically instructed that they can't just make up damages numbers, but a significant amount of the courtroom time will be dedicated to both sides presenting arguments for specific damage amounts with detailed justifications, expert witnesses, etc. I'm not saying trials never result in wonky damages amounts, but the idea that juries generally just randomly pick the biggest number they can think of is largely a media created fiction.
Why should Tesla be responsible for what its employee allegedly said? How ridiculous.
And why would someone be entitled to monetary compensation because someone said "welcome to the plantation"? What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"? When did people become so psychologically weak? And what is the loss that is being compensated?
EDIT: Can people please stop downvoting comments they disagree with? If you disagree with someone, upvote them and have a fucking conversation. Downvoting and flagging is NOT for disagreement.
I assume Tesla doesn't have to settle if there is no basis for the claim, if it does not violate any law, or it is not afraid of internal documents revealed about this in discovery. And Tesla has the money and hires lawyers for dragging an ordinary employee into deep lawsuits. If they care enough about what's "right" and the facts, they would prove that in court.
The mere fact that there is a settlement says something to me.
Er, you should reread the quote: "We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us". He just settled. That means it must have been a just case.
That or he is a hypocritical self-aggrandizing liar when he claims the Fremont factory is not abhorrently and pervasively racist.
If he sought victory, then he believed it was a just case and would not settle. If he settled, then he believed it was a unjust case and would not fight. If such a person settles and fights then they are acting in two contradictory ways which is called hypocrisy.
Given that they clearly settled we must either believe they are acting consistently and thus believe the case to be just. Or they both settled and fought (or believe the case to be unjust) which means they are acting inconsistently and are thus hypocrites.
I gotta admit, in your grandparent post I responded after reading only your first paragraph, having the "Or"-clause in a separate paragraph made it sound like you were using logic to be very charitable.
I guess after this lesson of logic I need to take a lesson in proper reading, and you perhaps need one for writing.
I mean I just don't think it says anything either way. He spews all kinds of shit on twitter and habitually lies about his intentions and motivations. I'm not gonna take him seriously this one time because it aligns with my own view of his racist malfeasance.
Thankfully you are (probably) just a random person on the Internet, not a lawmaker, and our employment laws aren't based on those crazy, misinformed ideas.
> You are not morally entitled to be compensated because you have sustained no loss. There is nothing to compensate.
>Can people please stop downvoting comments they disagree with? If you disagree with someone, upvote them and have a fucking conversation. Downvoting and flagging is NOT for disagreement.
you got at least one upvote from me, and agreed about the infantile stupidity of the downvoting on this site, it's idiotic, detracts from decent debate and often gets used by people who apparently have the emotional development of children just for the sake of trying to make anything they dislike disappear. I apply and recommend a specific rule of never using the silly downvote no matter how much you hate an opinion.
There was a meeting about the new machine after it was installed. It wasn’t meeting spec - jamming up other machines, slowing everything down. People tried working around it, adjusting workflows, but nothing fixed the underlying issue.
At a certain point, you’d just replace the machine.
But here’s the thing - this wasn’t just any machine, and it was causing real problems.
Turns out, in this case, the “new machine” is Tony. And Tony’s kind of a racist. He’s tanking morale, making people feel unsafe. But management keeps him around because “he works hard.”
If Tony were a literal machine causing this kind of disruption, you’d replace him without a second thought. But because he’s a person, and management doesn’t want to deal with it, they let the damage spread. That’s not just bad leadership - that’s liability.
So what do you think Tesla should be responsible for - just the machines, or also when someone like ‘Tony’ starts throwing the whole system off?
If you keep someone like Tony around, knowing the damage he’s causing, you’re not neutral - you’re endorsing his behavior.
>Turns out, in this case, the “new machine” is Tony. And Tony’s kind of a racist. He’s tanking morale, making people feel unsafe. But management keeps him around because “he works hard.”
You're talking about management. Not the law. This discussion is about legal obligations. There is no law that says people should not have to work around things they don't like. There is no law of morale.
It also has nothing to do with anyone being "kind of a racist" or causing "disruption" or "tanking morale" or "making people feel unsafe". You have added all of those yourself.
The article is about a single woman complaining about a couple of specific comments. She is heavily incentivised by the American system to overstate the effect these comments have on her. If she just says she doesn't like it (reality) she gets nothing. If she claims it has caused her emotional harm, she gets something.
>So what do you think Tesla should be responsible for - just the machines, or also when someone like ‘Tony’ starts throwing the whole system off?
It should quite obviously not be legally responsible for what its staff members say, outside of their authority. What's more there should be nothing to be legally responsible for anyway, because saying "welcome to the plantation" isn't and shouldn't be a legal wrong.
Your analogy doesn't change anything.
>If you keep someone like Tony around, knowing the damage he’s causing, you’re not neutral - you’re endorsing his behavior.
And nobody said that Tesla shouldn't be able to fire someone if it disagrees with what its employee said or did. But obviously that doesn't mean that what was said was legally actionable.
This is one of the worst takes I've seen on hacker news. This account piqued my curiosity, ended up browsing through the comment history and holy shit...
> Can people please stop downvoting comments they disagree with? If you disagree with someone, upvote them and have a fucking conversation. Downvoting and flagging is NOT for disagreement.
"sticks, stones and downvotes may break my bones but words will never hurt me"
Coming after Diaz v Tesla [1] where Tesla was found guilty of racial harassment and discrimination in that same Fremont, California plant (as can be seen here on page 3-11 [2]) to a degree that the jury deemed it worthy of a $136.9 million award, the single largest award in a race harassment case in American history [2]. That award was later reduced for procedural reasons as it was beyond the maximum limit the law allows. And further reduced in a subsequent trial evaluating direct damages due to emotional distress and loss of work which, as a matter of law, restricted the maximum allowable punitive damages. Despite that, the jury found it necessary to award punitive damages in excess of the standard maximum of 9:1 [4] which was upheld by the courts as, in the words of the judge: "Tesla’s conduct was reprehensible and repeated"[5] and as such the award in excess of standard maximums was "appropriate in light of the endemic racism at the Tesla factory and Tesla’s repeated failure to rectify it"[6].
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06...
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06...
[3] https://www.civilrightsca.com/key-verdicts/diaz-v-tesla-race...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Farm_Mutual_Automobile_I...
[5] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06... Page 29
[6] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06... Page 1 End of Paragraph 1.
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A decade ago, citing sources in an online debate was considered normal. I think we should bring that back. If you cite sources, it's harder to lie, and you have to do at least a little bit of research before posting. It leads to much better discourse, IMO.
do you dispute these things happened?
So let's say it's an organized campaign. So what? Are they stating the facts? If so, does it matter?
fake damage rewards are designed to benefit corps so they can cause public outrage in their favor while in reality paying a small fraction due to payout limitations.
What a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
American civil courts having juries for no good reason is the issue. Nobody anywhere else in the world still uses juries for civil trials and for this sort of reason.
Damages are compensatory. Allowing a jury to pluck 9-digit numbers from thin air to be reduced later is stupid.
> Damages are compensatory.
No,compensatory damages are compensatory. Statutory and exemplary/punitive damages are not compensatory
> Allowing a jury to pluck 9-digit numbers from thin air to be reduced later is stupid. tory.
Juries aren't allowed to pick numbers out of the air; on compensatory damages, as the finder of fact, the jury performs the same function as a criminal jury, it determines what facts were proven to the required standard, including the amount of harm proven.
I was on a civil jury a while ago and it was pretty eye opening how the process actually works. I'd say about half of the court time was dedicated to arguments about proving specific damages and ultimately the result was that the jury found in favor of the plaintiff but awarded a much lower damage amount than they were asking for specifically because they failed to prove that amount of harm. The idea of juries plucking random numbers of out thin air doesn't even remotely match my experience, or reality based on conversations I've had with lawyers I know.
> Allowing a jury to pluck 9-digit numbers from thin air to be reduced later is stupid.
That's not how civil jury trials work. Not only are juries specifically instructed that they can't just make up damages numbers, but a significant amount of the courtroom time will be dedicated to both sides presenting arguments for specific damage amounts with detailed justifications, expert witnesses, etc. I'm not saying trials never result in wonky damages amounts, but the idea that juries generally just randomly pick the biggest number they can think of is largely a media created fiction.
Welcome to the slave house is far more egregious than welcome to the plantation. Not sure why they chose the latter for the headline of the article.
Why should Tesla be responsible for what its employee allegedly said? How ridiculous.
And why would someone be entitled to monetary compensation because someone said "welcome to the plantation"? What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"? When did people become so psychologically weak? And what is the loss that is being compensated?
EDIT: Can people please stop downvoting comments they disagree with? If you disagree with someone, upvote them and have a fucking conversation. Downvoting and flagging is NOT for disagreement.
I assume Tesla doesn't have to settle if there is no basis for the claim, if it does not violate any law, or it is not afraid of internal documents revealed about this in discovery. And Tesla has the money and hires lawyers for dragging an ordinary employee into deep lawsuits. If they care enough about what's "right" and the facts, they would prove that in court.
The mere fact that there is a settlement says something to me.
You do not need to assume, here is Elon Musk talking about his lawsuit philosophy:
"My commitment:
- We will never seek victory in a just case against us, even if we will probably win.
- We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose."[1]
[1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1527749734668050433
It's his idea of just though, so it could mean anything.
right. lots of ambiguous words like justice, freedom, advertising. two people can say the words to each other and mean something completely different.
How much weight do you think the words of a notoriously vindictive self-aggrandizing liar should carry?
Er, you should reread the quote: "We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us". He just settled. That means it must have been a just case.
That or he is a hypocritical self-aggrandizing liar when he claims the Fremont factory is not abhorrently and pervasively racist.
How charitable of an interpretation. It has the air of "I only have consensual sex. We had sex, therefore it must have been consensual"...
But did he instruct them before to seek victory? If he did, then your set of tautologies just contradicted themselves...
If he sought victory, then he believed it was a just case and would not settle. If he settled, then he believed it was a unjust case and would not fight. If such a person settles and fights then they are acting in two contradictory ways which is called hypocrisy.
Given that they clearly settled we must either believe they are acting consistently and thus believe the case to be just. Or they both settled and fought (or believe the case to be unjust) which means they are acting inconsistently and are thus hypocrites.
That concludes my lesson in elementary logic.
I gotta admit, in your grandparent post I responded after reading only your first paragraph, having the "Or"-clause in a separate paragraph made it sound like you were using logic to be very charitable.
I guess after this lesson of logic I need to take a lesson in proper reading, and you perhaps need one for writing.
I mean I just don't think it says anything either way. He spews all kinds of shit on twitter and habitually lies about his intentions and motivations. I'm not gonna take him seriously this one time because it aligns with my own view of his racist malfeasance.
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Thankfully you are (probably) just a random person on the Internet, not a lawmaker, and our employment laws aren't based on those crazy, misinformed ideas.
> You are not morally entitled to be compensated because you have sustained no loss. There is nothing to compensate.
What the hell are you talking about?
>Can people please stop downvoting comments they disagree with? If you disagree with someone, upvote them and have a fucking conversation. Downvoting and flagging is NOT for disagreement.
you got at least one upvote from me, and agreed about the infantile stupidity of the downvoting on this site, it's idiotic, detracts from decent debate and often gets used by people who apparently have the emotional development of children just for the sake of trying to make anything they dislike disappear. I apply and recommend a specific rule of never using the silly downvote no matter how much you hate an opinion.
There was a meeting about the new machine after it was installed. It wasn’t meeting spec - jamming up other machines, slowing everything down. People tried working around it, adjusting workflows, but nothing fixed the underlying issue.
At a certain point, you’d just replace the machine.
But here’s the thing - this wasn’t just any machine, and it was causing real problems.
Turns out, in this case, the “new machine” is Tony. And Tony’s kind of a racist. He’s tanking morale, making people feel unsafe. But management keeps him around because “he works hard.”
If Tony were a literal machine causing this kind of disruption, you’d replace him without a second thought. But because he’s a person, and management doesn’t want to deal with it, they let the damage spread. That’s not just bad leadership - that’s liability.
So what do you think Tesla should be responsible for - just the machines, or also when someone like ‘Tony’ starts throwing the whole system off?
If you keep someone like Tony around, knowing the damage he’s causing, you’re not neutral - you’re endorsing his behavior.
>Turns out, in this case, the “new machine” is Tony. And Tony’s kind of a racist. He’s tanking morale, making people feel unsafe. But management keeps him around because “he works hard.”
You're talking about management. Not the law. This discussion is about legal obligations. There is no law that says people should not have to work around things they don't like. There is no law of morale.
It also has nothing to do with anyone being "kind of a racist" or causing "disruption" or "tanking morale" or "making people feel unsafe". You have added all of those yourself.
The article is about a single woman complaining about a couple of specific comments. She is heavily incentivised by the American system to overstate the effect these comments have on her. If she just says she doesn't like it (reality) she gets nothing. If she claims it has caused her emotional harm, she gets something.
>So what do you think Tesla should be responsible for - just the machines, or also when someone like ‘Tony’ starts throwing the whole system off?
It should quite obviously not be legally responsible for what its staff members say, outside of their authority. What's more there should be nothing to be legally responsible for anyway, because saying "welcome to the plantation" isn't and shouldn't be a legal wrong.
Your analogy doesn't change anything.
>If you keep someone like Tony around, knowing the damage he’s causing, you’re not neutral - you’re endorsing his behavior.
And nobody said that Tesla shouldn't be able to fire someone if it disagrees with what its employee said or did. But obviously that doesn't mean that what was said was legally actionable.
>And nobody said that Tesla shouldn't be able to fire someone if it disagrees with what its employee said or did.
You explicitly did this earlier, actually:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43747971
Words can punch down hard, especially when backed by centuries of systemic racism
Who working at Tesla can speak with the force of a punch?
Nobody. Words cannot "punch" in any direction. Don't abuse language to try to conflate words with violence. Violence is physical. Words are harmless.
That's why incitement to riot isn't a crime.
... Wait, my mistake. Yes it is.
This is one of the worst takes I've seen on hacker news. This account piqued my curiosity, ended up browsing through the comment history and holy shit...
> Can people please stop downvoting comments they disagree with? If you disagree with someone, upvote them and have a fucking conversation. Downvoting and flagging is NOT for disagreement.
"sticks, stones and downvotes may break my bones but words will never hurt me"
Good god you're stupid. Where have I sued or tried to prosecute someone for downvoting me? Where have I claimed that downvoting is violence? Nowhere.
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"vandalize Teslas" hey cmon i just keep Kraft cheese singles in my car for a nice snack on the go
I am a messy eater tho
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