Tesla Challenges $243 Million Verdict In Autopilot Death Trial

Tesla has asked a judge to nix nan $243 cardinal verdict lodged against nan institution successful a suit involving its Autopilot system, aliases to let a caller proceedings to occur, according to a caller tribunal filing.

The company’s lawyers reason that nan verdict, which a assemblage made earlier this month, “flies successful nan look of basal Florida tort law, nan Due Process Clause, and communal sense.” This latest filing by Tesla lawyers tries, erstwhile again, to remainder each of nan blasted connected nan driver George McGee, who helped origin nan crash.

The assemblage successful nan lawsuit yet decided that nan driver deserved two-thirds of nan blame, and attributed one-third to Tesla.

The high-profile lawsuit centered astir a 2019 clang successful Florida. McGee was driving a Tesla Model S astatine nighttime and utilizing nan company’s Autopilot driver assistance strategy (which is simply a little tin strategy than nan much fully-featured “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” software). Both systems require nan driver to support their hands connected nan wheel.

As he approached a perpendicularly-parked SUV, neither McGee nor nan Autopilot strategy applied nan brakes. McGee’s car blew a extremity motion and deed nan SUV, sidesplitting 20-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and severely injuring her fellow Dillon Angulo.

McGee was sued separately and settled pinch nan the victims. This week, we learned that Tesla rejected a colony offer of $60 cardinal from nan victims a fewer months earlier nan verdict was rendered.

Tesla’s lawyers reason successful nan caller filing that merchandise liability rule is expected to penalize manufacturers whose cars “perform successful ways that dangerously defy mean consumers’ expectations aliases are unreasonably dangerous.”

“That is not this lawsuit — not successful nan slightest,” they wrote. They opportunity McGee’s “extraordinary recklessness” was to blame, arsenic he was reaching for his telephone erstwhile nan clang occurred — a truth he admitted to successful his ain case.

Allowing nan verdict to stand, they argue, would “deter innovation, confound user expectations, and lead manufacturers to wantonness information enhancements for fearfulness of being subjected to ample punishments erstwhile a driver misuses their product.”

Tesla’s lawyers besides return shots astatine nan opposing lawyers successful nan filing, claiming they “overwhelmed this assemblage pinch a flood of highly prejudicial but irrelevant grounds — astir information preservation, Elon Musk, and dissimilar accidents.”

“Plaintiffs’ counsel ensured that this proceedings was ne'er really astir nan 2019 Tesla Model S aliases nan mishap caused by McGee’s reckless driving,” they wrote.

Brett Schreiber, a lead lawyer for nan plaintiffs, did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.