Tesla asks court to toss wrongful death verdict that cost it $243 million
Earlier this month, a jury found Tesla partially responsible for the death of Naibel Benavides, 22, who was killed by a driver of the model who plowed in her and her boyfriend Dillon Angulo. Tesla was ordered to pay the families of the victims 243 million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages, an astonishing result for a company that has managed to avoid taking responsibility for accidents involving its partially autonomous software.
In the file, Tesla’s legal team said that the driver of the Model S had been responsible for the accident. And they ask court to invalidate the verdict, or at least order a new trial with jury.
“The judgment of 243 million dollars against Tesla flies in the face of the basic law of the offense of Florida, the regular procedure clause and common sense,” write the lawyers of the company, noting that McGee had supported the accelerator to cancel the automatic pilot in the seconds before the crash. “Car manufacturers do not ensure the world against damage caused by reckless drivers.”
Lawyers also claim that the complainants should not have been allowed to conclude declarations of evidence of the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, who has long said that company vehicles are capable of higher levels of autonomy than they really are. And they called the claims on the concealment of data from Tesla – the company was accused of retaining data from the police of the police investigating the accident – were false and “inflamed” the jury against the company.
The request was filed by the lawyers of Gibson Dunn, a company which represented Tesla in a trial against a former employee and a technological startup accused of having stolen commercial secrets for a robotic hand.
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August 29 update: A spokesperson for the lawyer for the applicant Brett Schreiber sent the following declaration:
“This motion is the latest example of Tesla and Musk’s total contempt for the human cost of their defective technology. The jury heard all the facts and came to the right conclusion that it was a case of shared responsibility, but which does not reduce the automatic full role and the fake statements of the company with its capacities played in the crash which killed and permanent the wounded. As an indictment of the autonomous vehicle industry, but of the imprudent and dangerous deployment of Tesla of its automatic pilot system. »»
