NEW YORK: A Florida jury on Friday ordered Tesla to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to plaintiffs who blamed a deadly 2019 crash on the company’s “Autopilot” driver assistance technology.
The jury found Tesla’s system partly responsible for a crash in Key Largo that killed Naibel Benavides Leon and injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, according to attorney Darren Jeffrey Rousso, a partner at the law firm that represented Angulo and Leon’s family.
The plaintiffs had alleged that Autopilot was to blame when driver George McGee’s Tesla careened into a Chevrolet sport utility vehicle, killing Leon and injuring Angulo.
The jury awarded US$200 million in punitive damages, plus US$59 million in compensatory damages to Leon’s family and US$70 million in damages to Angulo, according to court records.
Since the jury assigned one-third of the blame to Tesla, the compensatory damages will be reduced, Rousso said, with the total impact of the jury award totalling US$242 million after these reductions.
“Justice was done,” Rousso said. “The jury heard all the evidence and came up with a fair and just verdict on behalf of our clients.”
Tesla will appeal the decision, according to its defence attorneys.
“Today’s verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeapordise Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology,” Tesla said through its legal team.
“The evidence has always shown that this driver was solely at fault because he was speeding, with his foot on the accelerator – which overrode Autopilot – as he rummaged for his dropped phone without his eyes on the road,” Tesla said.
“To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash. This was never about Autopilot.”–AFP
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