A U.S. court has made a preliminary judgment that Tesla appeared to have known about the flaws in its autonomous driving aid, Autopilot, in a lawsuit over a fatal accident. Following a jury verdict on punitive damages, Tesla may have to pay astronomical compensation if it loses. Tesla’s stock price closed lower amid these concerns.
According to Reuters and other media outlets on the 22nd (local time), Judge Reed Scott of the Circuit Court of Palm Beach County, Florida, allowed the relatives of a traffic accident victim who sued Tesla to claim punitive damages on the 17th. This is because the plaintiff, the family of Tesla car owner Stephen Banner, provided sufficient evidence of Tesla’s illegal activities and gross negligence, so if the jury concludes that Tesla’s fault caused the accident, they can order punitive damages. Florida law permits the claim of punitive damages if confirmation of intentional illegal activities or gross negligence occurs. The compensation amount could reach billions of dollars.
The family filed this lawsuit claiming Tesla’s responsibility for the accident in which Stephen Banner died when his Tesla Model 3, driving with Autopilot turned on, crashed into the bottom of a large truck trailer in north Miami in 2019.
Judge Scott ruled, “It is reasonable to conclude that the defendant Tesla’s CEO and engineers were seriously aware of Autopilot’s traffic detection failure problem.” He pointed out a 2016 video of Tesla showing the vehicle driving without driver intervention to advertise Autopilot, saying, “There are no signs in this video that express a desire for autonomous driving or that this technology does not currently exist in the market.”
Furthermore, Judge Scott found evidence that Tesla used a “marketing strategy to describe the product (Autopilot) as autonomous driving” and that the public comments of CEO Musk about this technology had a significant impact on belief in the product’s capabilities.
Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said the judge’s summary of this evidence is significant because it suggests a “stunning discrepancy” between what Tesla internally knew and what it touted in its marketing. The plaintiff’s lawyer emphasized, “We are very proud of this result.”
The court has not yet set the schedule for the jury verdict. Tesla won the first fatal accident civil lawsuit held in California last month but encountered another setback with this trial in Florida.
By. Lee Tae Kyu
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