Tesla, a US electric vehicle maker led by CEO Elon Musk, has again paid a hefty amount of compensation to a black employee who has accused him of being racially discriminated against.

According to the Wall Street Journal on the 5th (local time), a jury in a federal court upheld a total of 136,690, citing racial discrimination claims made by Owen Diaz, 53, who worked as an elevator operator at Tesla's Fremont, California factory in 2015 and 2016. He ordered the payment of a $10,000 indemnity.

The trial was conducted on the issues that Diaz was forced to work in a racially hostile work environment, Tesla failed to prevent it, and that he was harmed by the lack of supervision of his employees.

Diaz claimed to have seen racist images and text written in toilets and other places.

Tesla's attorney, Tracy Kennedy, said in his closing argument that there was no evidence that a Tesla employee harassed Diaz, arguing that the company should not be held accountable for his racist allegations.

Many of the workers at Tesla's plants are being supplied by labor subcontractors.

After a four-hour deliberation, the jury gave Diaz a favorable verdict and ordered Tesla to pay $6.9 million (about 8.2 billion won) in damages and $130 million (about 154.5 billion won) in punitive damages.

Diaz said the decision had lightened his shoulders after the jury's verdict, he said, "and shed light on what's going on inside the Tesla plant."

Tesla's vice president, Valerie Walkman, said in an email to employees on Wednesday that Diaz had employees take action when he complained of harassment.

"Based on these facts, the verdict of the jury appears to be unjust," Walkman said.

Meanwhile, Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdict or plans to appeal.

This isn't the only racism-related compensation for Tesla's black employees.

In August, Melvin Berry, a black man who worked at Tesla's Northern California plant, was awarded more than $1 million in compensation for alleging racism.

Berry confronted his boss at the factory with the racially degrading term 'nigger' heard more than 100 times, but instead insisted that he only worked longer hours and had to carry heavy loads.

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