A federal jury in Miami has ordered Tesla to pay $243 million (£183 million) in damages after finding the electric car manufacturer’s Autopilot system partly responsible for a fatal 2019 crash that killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and severely injured her boyfriend Dillon Angulo.
The landmark verdict, delivered on Friday, marks the first time a jury has held Tesla legally liable for a death involving its controversial driver-assistance technology, potentially opening the floodgates for dozens of similar lawsuits against the company led by billionaire Elon Musk.
The eight-person jury awarded $43 million (£32.4 million) in compensatory damages and a staggering $200 million (£151 million) in punitive damages, intended to deter future harmful behaviour by Tesla. The decision comes as Musk attempts to convince regulators and the public that Tesla vehicles are safe enough to operate as driverless robotaxis in major cities.
Brett Schreiber, representing the victims, said: “Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans.
The tragic incident occurred on 25 April 2019 in Key Largo, Florida, when George McGee’s Tesla Model S, travelling at 62 miles per hour whilst on Autopilot, ploughed through a stop sign and flashing red light at a T-junction on Card Sound Road. The vehicle struck a parked Chevrolet Tahoe where Benavides Leon and Angulo were standing whilst stargazing.
Evidence Controversy Rocks Trial
A crucial piece of evidence emerged during the three-week trial that Tesla had previously claimed was deleted. Adam Boumel, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, revealed that a forensic data expert recovered an augmented video of the crash containing Autopilot computer data.
“What we ultimately learned from that augmented video is that the vehicle 100% knew that it was about to run off the roadway, through a stop sign, through a blinking red light, through a parked car and through a pedestrian, yet did nothing other than shut itself off when the crash was unavoidable,” Boumel stated.
The jury found McGee 67 per cent responsible for the crash, with Tesla bearing 33 per cent liability. McGee had admitted to police at the scene that he dropped his mobile phone and reached down to retrieve it moments before impact.
During his testimony, McGee expressed his belief that the technology had failed him: “My concept was it would assist me should I have a failure or should I make a mistake, that the car would be able to help me. And in that case, I do feel like it failed me.”
Tesla’s defence attorney Joel Smith argued the driver bore sole responsibility, noting McGee had safely navigated the same intersection “30 or 40 times previously” without incident. “The only thing that changed was the driver’s behaviour,” Smith told jurors.
Industry Shockwaves Expected
Financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities described the verdict as sending “shock waves” throughout the automotive industry, warning it poses significant legal risks for every company developing increasingly autonomous vehicles.
Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the case, predicted: “This will open the floodgates. It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.”
The verdict arrives at a critical juncture for Tesla, which reported its second consecutive quarter of year-on-year revenue decline. The company’s share price dipped 1.8 per cent on Friday and is down 25 per cent for the year, the biggest drop amongst technology megacap companies.
Tesla immediately announced plans to appeal, calling the verdict “wrong” and claiming it would “jeopardise Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology.”
In a statement, the company insisted: “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.”
Emotional Scenes in Courtroom
When the verdict was read, families of the victims embraced their attorneys, with some crying. Angulo, who suffered multiple broken bones, a traumatic brain injury and lasting psychological effects, was visibly emotional as he hugged his mother. He walked into court with a limp and required a cushion to sit comfortably during proceedings.
Neima Benavides, sister of the deceased, testified that her family initially sued only McGee before learning about Autopilot’s involvement. “We have the driver,” she said. “And we have the car too.”
The young victim had emigrated from Cuba just three years before her death and was described by her sister as “so full of dreams” and “the joy of our family, the baby.”
Wider Legal Implications
The case highlights ongoing scrutiny of Tesla’s marketing practices for its driver-assistance features. Despite the Autopilot name suggesting autonomous capability, Tesla’s owner’s manual and website state drivers must remain fully attentive with hands on the wheel.
In 2023, Tesla recalled 2.3 million vehicles in the United States amid concerns that Autopilot failed to sufficiently alert inattentive drivers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration initiated investigations in 2021 into possible safety defects in Tesla’s systems and continues examining whether the company’s remedial measures have been effective.
Approximately a dozen active lawsuits focus on similar claims involving Autopilot or Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system in fatal or injurious crashes. Tesla has typically settled such cases out of court or moved them into private arbitration.
US District Judge Beth Bloom, who presided over the Miami trial, had written in July that “a reasonable jury could find that Tesla acted in reckless disregard of human life for the sake of developing their product and maximising profit.”
The verdict may complicate Tesla’s ambitions to launch robotaxi services, with regulators already warning the company against social media posts that could mislead drivers about their vehicles’ autonomous capabilities.
Tesla claims significant improvements to its technology since the 2019 crash, though questions about trust in the company’s safety claims featured prominently throughout the trial.
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- Elon Musk in 2023 (cropped) – English description: Elon Musk in 2023 (cropped), depicting Elon Musk speaking at the UK AI Summit at Bletchley Park on 1 October 2023, photo by Marcel Grabowski / UK Government, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution‑ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY‑SA 4.0).
