Tesla asks court to throw out big damage award in crash by arguing comments about Musk misled jury
By BERNARD CONDON NEW YORK AP The car company run by Elon Musk sought a federal court Friday to dismiss massive damages awarded to sufferers of a deadly crash arguing that their lawyers had misled the jury by improperly bringing up the billionaire during the trial Related Articles Cruise industry sues to challenge Hawaii s tourism tax designed to deal with context change issues California lawmakers reach deal with Uber Lyft that would allow drivers to unionize Spirit Airlines files for bankruptcy protection again Hy-Vee pulls out of Stillwater improvement sparking hunt for new grocer States fast-track wind solar permits and contracts to beat Trump s deadline The filing in Miami federal court seeks to overturn the million award after a -year old participant out stargazing was flung through the air to her death by a runaway Tesla equipped with Autopilot features that Musk had talked up for years A jury earlier this month uncovered that the speeding Tesla driver was mostly to blame but Tesla was also responsible because of faulty tool The matter has been watched closely by carmakers racing to develop fully self-driving features They fear it could portend massive liability risks should future juries reviewing accidents decide carmakers are also to blame even when drivers act recklessly If the verdict is allowed to stand it will chill innovation harm road safety and invite future juries to punish manufacturers who bring new safety features to region the company commented in the filing Tesla is also arguing that opposing lawyers led the jury astray by introducing highly prejudicial but irrelevant evidence suggesting Tesla had hid or lost video and information that after it was dug up by the opposing side helped recreate what went wrong moments before the crash Tesla had declared that it made a mistake in not offering up the evidence earlier and did not do that deliberately Musk had taken a big chance by allowing the event to go to trial at a pivotal moment for his electric car company He is trying to convince Americans that his self-driving instrument improved since the crash can be trusted amid ambitious plans to roll out driverless Tesla robotaxis around the country Multiple similar cases against Tesla had either been dismissed or been settled by the company before going to trial The plaintiff lawyers revealed in a court filing last week that they had recounted Tesla that they were willing to accept million to settle But Tesla refused In the end the jury decided on compensatory and punitive damages for the family of the killed Naibel Benavides and her boyfriend Dillon Angulo amounting to four times that amount The filing by Tesla on Friday inquired the judge to grant it a new trial throw out the award or at least vastly reduce it The jury held that Tesla bore important responsibility because its instrument failed even though the driver had admitted he was wrong to be distracted by his cellphone The driver had settled separately with the Benavides family and Angulo Tesla has declared the hardware had nothing to do with the crash The plaintiff lawyers also explained Tesla s decision to even use the term Autopilot demonstrated it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes slowing a car and other tasks falling far short of driving the car itself They reported other automakers use terms like driver assist and copilot to make sure drivers don t rely too much on the innovation European regulators have complained about Tesla word choices for its driver assistance tool and have raised questions about whether it misleads drivers too Musk had described investors last year that it expected to get approval from those regulators for a more advanced version of Autopilot in March but it s still waiting for the go-ahead That advanced driver assistance feature which Musk calls Full-Self Driving has also drawn scrutiny in U S for possibly misleading drivers An administrative judge in California is hearing a event in which the state motor vehicles department is seeking to withdraw Tesla s license to sell cars partly because of what it says are misleading names I trusted the device too much the driver in the Florida crash George McGee commented in his testimony I inferred that if the car saw something in front of it it would provide a warning and apply the brakes The lead defense lawyer in the Miami incident Joel Smith countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone adding to the danger by speeding Tesla stock fell nearly Friday after a drop a day earlier when sales figures out of Europe demonstrated car buyers there are still avoiding Tesla The company had been hit with boycotts and protest earlier his year after Musk embraced extreme right wing politicians there
