Reuters
- Tesla has settled a lawsuit over a 2019 crash involving Autopilot, avoiding a jury trial.
- The family of a 15-year-old boy who was killed in a California highway wreck had sued Tesla.
- The settlement follows a more than $242 million verdict against Tesla in a similar Florida case.
Tesla has avoided another jury trial over a deadly crash involving the electric carmaker’s Autopilot driver-assist system.
Elon Musk’s company reached a deal this week to settle a lawsuit with the family of a 15-year-old boy who was killed in a 2019 California highway collision after a Tesla Model 3 slammed into the teen’s father’s pickup truck.
Notice of settlement documents were filed in Alameda County Superior Court on Monday, just four weeks before the case was scheduled to go to trial. The documents say that the settlement is “conditional.”
Attorneys for the family who sued Tesla would not provide details of the settlement to Business Insider, saying it is confidential. Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The settlement comes after a Florida federal jury last month found Tesla partly to blame for a 2019 Autopilot-related crash that left a 22-year-old woman dead and her boyfriend seriously injured.
Tesla was dealt a major blow in that case. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $329 million in total damages, leaving the car company on the hook for $242.5 million.
Brett Schreiber, an attorney who helped secure that verdict, is also part of the plaintiff’s legal team in the California case.
Attorneys for Tesla have slammed the Florida verdict, arguing in court papers that the massive judgment “flies in the face” of the law and should be tossed.
The company maintained in the court papers that the “reckless” driver of the Tesla 2019 Model S — and not its Autopilot software — was entirely responsible for the Key Largo crash.
Autopilot allows Tesla vehicles to steer themselves, switch lanes, brake, and accelerate independently. Tesla says on its website that Autopilot mode is “intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.”
The lawsuit filed in the now-settled California case said Benjamin Maldonado was traveling with his teen son, Jovani, in a Ford pickup truck on an Alameda County interstate in August 2019 when a Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, rear-ended the truck, fatally tossing the boy from the vehicle.
The driver of the Tesla, who also had been named as a defendant in the lawsuit, was “passively sitting” in the vehicle with Autopilot mode on and did not have his hands on the steering wheel for at least 14 seconds prior to the collision, the complaint alleged.
The lawsuit accused Tesla of negligence, alleging that its Autopilot technology had design defects.
Tesla has argued in court documents that the driver of the vehicle was responsible for its safe operation.
The car company has faced multiple lawsuits over its Autopilot driver-assist software and has come under increased scrutiny from regulators regarding the technology in recent years.
Tesla won two lawsuits in 2023 involving crashes where Autopilot was in use and has settled several others.
Last year, Tesla settled a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the family of Apple engineer Walter Huang, who was killed in a 2018 fiery wreck when his Tesla Model X SUV smashed into a concrete barrier on a California highway as the vehicle was in Autopilot mode.
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