How Quinn Emanuel Reduced a $136.9 Million Race Discrimination Verdict to Less Than $3.2 Million on Retrial

Episode description:

I was joined by Daniel Posner, a partner in Quinn Emanuel’s Los Angeles office, and Asher B. Griffin, Co-Managing Partner of Quinn Emanuel’s Austin, Texas office. We discussed how Dan and Asher’s Quinn Emanuel team was brought in to retry the damages award in a race discrimination case against Tesla and reduced the $136.9 million verdict another firm gave up in the first trial to only $175,000 in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages.  We discussed the unique challenges of a retrial on damages only, including how the jury in the retrial was instructed that Tesla was liable for both compensatory and punitive damages, how the judge limited the parties in the retrial to the documents and witnesses presented at the first trial and how they were still able to use the latitude allowed in cross-examination to challenge the credibility of each instance of alleged discrimination and achieve this outstanding result.

Published: Jul 27 2023