POLSON — A jury in Florida awarded plaintiffs $329 million in damages on Friday in a case that blamed Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance feature for a 2019 crash that killed a young woman and gravely injured her boyfriend.
Tesla has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the case and said it plans to appeal the decision.
The company released the following statement after the jury's decision:
"Today’s verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology. We plan to appeal given the substantial errors of law and irregularities at trial. Even though this jury found that the driver was overwhelmingly responsible for this tragic accident in 2019, 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. To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash. This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by plaintiffs’ lawyers blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility."
The crash involved a Tesla Model S whose driver had been using the car's Autopilot technology in the moments before he smashed into an SUV in Key Largo, Florida. The driver of the Model S said he reached down to pick up his cellphone, taking his eyes off the road and colliding with the parked SUV.
The collision killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and critically injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. Both were standing next to the SUV when it was hit by the Tesla.
The plaintiffs had claimed that the company deliberately hid information about the crash, and accused Tesla of encouraging drivers to over-rely on Autopilot.
"This car was not safe and destroyed our lives," Angulo said in an exclusive interview with Scripps News before the trial. "We all need to do what we have to do to hold Elon Musk and Tesla accountable."
Angulo's attorneys believe Tesla "engaged in a scheme to hide" data produced by the Tesla Model S during the crash. An expert witness for the plaintiffs discovered the existence of the data after Tesla had testified it had turned over all information from the car.
Tesla has since testified that it did not realize there was missing data.
