A federal judge shot down a request for sanctions against Tesla over the company's handling of discovery in a case where three factory employees say they faced daily discrimination.

In the motion, plaintiffs alleged that Tesla and its Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton counsel only complied with a court order to release the names and contact information of their co-workers—and potential witnesses to the alleged discrimination at the Fremont, California-based factory—when it favored the company.

Plaintiffs attorneys from California Civil Rights Law Group in San Anselmo, California, and Los Angeles' Alexander Krakow + Glick asked U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of the Northern District of California, who is overseeing the lawsuit, to preclude witnesses "Tesla improperly refused to identify in discovery."

Orrick on Friday denied the sanctions motion, finding that the motion should have been presented as a joint discovery letter. Orrick said even if plaintiffs' counsel did properly present the letter following the meet-and-confer process, he would have denied their $7,240 request for attorney fees and costs.

"As far as witnesses, I will resolve the parties' messy back-and-forth on a case-by-case basis at the pretrial conference," he wrote in the Feb. 14 order. "If the plaintiffs are able to show that Tesla has concealed identifying information or failed to disclose anyone who was in fact responsive to plaintiffs' discovery requests and my order, Tesla will not be permitted to call those individuals as witnesses during trial."

Plant workers Demetric Di-az, Owen Diaz and Lamar Patterson allege that Tesla cultivated a "Jim Crow era" culture and where racial slurs were hurled at them every workday, according to the complaint filed in December 2018. They name staffing companies Citistaff Solutions Inc., West Valley Staffing Group and Chartwell Staffing Services as joint-employer defendants in the case.

In the motions for sanctions, the attorneys called Tesla's behavior "a textbook case of bad-faith discovery abuse." The CCRLG's Larry Organ told The Recorder last month that the discovery dispute has dragged on for nearly a year. Organ did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Sheppard Mullin's Tracey Kennedy, Patricia Jeng and Reanne Swafford-Harris rebuffed plaintiffs' claims, arguing in opposition to the sanctions motion that plaintiffs "blatantly misrepresent the facts by claiming that Tesla has not produced contact information responsive to the discovery request at issue by pointing to various other documents referencing individuals for whom they do not have contact information—without actually showing how these individuals fall within the scope of either the original requests."

The pretrial conference is scheduled for April 20, ahead of the May 11 trial date.

Tesla and counsel at Sheppard Mullin did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.