Tesla’s racism trial in California opened Monday with a bad day for the company’s lawyers. The first witness testified that a senior Tesla in-house attorney had called him last week and let him believe he was working for the state, according to Law360 (paywall).
That same morning, Tesla’s outside counsel told the judge the N-word is a “term of respect and endearment” in the Black community. Both happened in front of Judge Peter Borkon, the one person who will decide the case.
Back in May 2022, three months after California first sued Tesla over racism at Fremont, Elon Musk announced that Tesla was building a “hardcore litigation department where we directly initiate and execute lawsuits,” with the team reporting directly to him. We found the timing strange back then, and Monday gave a good look at what “hardcore” means in practice.
Musk also promised Tesla would never settle an unjust case. It has since settled another racism lawsuit and partly settled the Vaughn class action, with about 580 workers still pressing individual claims.
But Tesla’s ‘hardcore lawyers’ went a little too hardcore in this case. Some would even call it witness tampering.
The call from Tesla’s lawyer
The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) is suing Tesla on behalf of more than 6,000 Black workers at its Fremont factory, as we reported when the trial opened. It’s a bench trial in Alameda County Superior Court, damages are uncapped, and it’s expected to run through October.
The CRD’s first witness was former Tesla worker Ryan Edwards. At the end of his direct examination, he told Borkon about a call last week from Timothy Kim, senior corporate counsel on Tesla’s employment litigation team.
Kim left a voicemail saying he was an attorney “handling the Tesla civil rights case,” Edwards testified. They then talked for about 30 minutes. Over that call, Kim kept steering him toward saying Tesla wasn’t a bad place to work, and even that it was the best job he ever had.
Edwards had his own lawyer at the time. Kim offered to represent him anyway and asked what settlements he’d signed or would consider. Edwards said it was only when Kim started reciting the full names of his old Tesla managers and supervisors that he understood the lawyer was on Tesla’s side, not the state’s.
Kim’s LinkedIn profile carries a single quote from Thomas Jefferson next to his job title: “We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.”
Four more witnesses gone quiet
CRD attorney Juan Gamboa asked Borkon to bar Tesla’s counsel from contacting anyone on the agency’s witness list.
He told the court the CRD had tried to reach at least four other listed witnesses over the past several days without getting a response, and that they’ve fallen “off our radar.” The agency believes Tesla’s lawyers got to them too, either with payments not to testify or by talking them out of it. Gamboa wants to stop Tesla from offering to represent witnesses “through persuasion and payment.”
Borkon didn’t rule on it right away. During a break, he told the CRD to file a formal motion if it wants the order. Tesla hasn’t commented publicly, and it no longer has a PR department to ask.
‘The N-word is not on trial here’
Tesla’s trial lawyer is Tyree P. Jones Jr. of Polsinelli PC. In his opening, he pointed to rap lyrics from Kanye West and Jay-Z to argue the slur is a term of endearment in the Black community. “This trial is not about the N-word — the N-word is not on trial here,” Jones said.
His case is that Tesla has “don’t do stupid stuff” policies, keeps adequate records, disciplines misconduct, and brought 20,000 jobs to Fremont. “The question is what is there to enjoin? The answer to that is: nothing,” he said.
The testimony that followed didn’t help. Edwards said a non-Black coworker called him the N-word, cursed at him, and threatened to beat him up. He reported it right away. A month later, he found out his managers had written him up over the incident, and he was later passed over for promotions after applying to more than 100 jobs.
The CRD’s Brett Watson told the court the evidence will show managers calling Tesla “the plantation,” with some referring to themselves and Elon Musk as “slave masters,” and graffiti including swastikas, “KKK,” and nooses left on factory walls for days.
The second witness, former regional security manager Ozell Murray, testified that his supervisor, Ray Sethna, now Tesla’s senior director of global security, told him to warn a Black Marine veteran he was hiring: “just be sure [the veteran] knows he’ll be called those words.”
Electrek’s Take
Lawyers talk to former employees before trial all the time. But California’s professional conduct rules are clear on two things: you don’t contact someone about a case when you know they have a lawyer, and you don’t let an unrepresented person misunderstand whose side you’re on. Edwards had a lawyer, and by his account, he spent a good part of a 30-minute call thinking Tesla’s attorney worked for the state.
Then 4 other witnesses contacted the same way have disappeared from the case.
Top comment by Beario
Building a hardcore legal team is something you do when you know you have problems and you want to minimize the damage that is coming. It is highly unlikely that 6000 people would have so many stories to tell about an abusive work environment that clearly wasn't managing the conditions correctly and anyone filing complaints were exposed to retaliation. It will be interesting to see the extent things went as the facts unfold in these cases.
Tesla will get to tell its side. But look at what the call was for, according to the testimony. Get a Black former worker, in a case about Black workers being called “slaves,” to say Tesla was the best job he ever had. Ask what settlement he’d take. Offer to be his lawyer. That’s not a witness interview.
And then there’s the defense strategy. Arguing that the N-word is a term of endearment, in a trial where the first witness says a non-Black coworker used it while threatening to beat him up, is not really endearing. So is doing it in front of the judge who alone decides whether Tesla gets hit with an injunction and uncapped damages.
Musk wanted a hardcore litigation team, and one of its lawyers apparently has a Jefferson quote about preferring war on his LinkedIn. Mission accomplished. We’ll see if Borkon is impressed.
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