A jury found Tesla partly responsible for the death of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides and ordered $243 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the victims' families. The crash involved a Model S driver who struck Benavides and her boyfriend Dillon Angulo. Tesla's legal team says the driver bore full responsibility and that the driver pressed the accelerator to override Autopilot seconds before impact. Tesla filed a motion seeking to invalidate the verdict or obtain a new trial, arguing that manufacturers are not liable for harms caused by reckless drivers and disputing evidence admission and data-coverup claims.
Earlier this month, a jury found Tesla partially responsible for the death of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides, who was killed by a Model S driver who plowed into her and her boyfriend Dillon Angulo. Tesla was ordered to pay the families of the victims $243 million in compensatory and punitive damages, a stunning outcome for a company that has managed to avoid taking responsibility for crashes involving its partially autonomous software.
The lawyers also claim that the plaintiffs should not have been allowed to enter into evidence statements from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has long claimed that the company's vehicles are capable of higher levels of autonomy than they actually are. And they called claims about data coverup on the part of Tesla - the company was accused of withholding camera data from police investigating the crash - were false and "inflamed" the jury against the company.
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