Tesla Found Partly Liable in 2019 Autopilot Death

A Miami jury found Tesla partially liable Friday in a 2019 crash that killed one person and injured another—all while the driver of the Model S used the automaker’s Autopilot driver assistance feature.

The jury found Tesla liable for $200 million in punitive damages, plus an additional $43 million in compensatory damages. (Because of state laws, the company will likely end up paying less.) A jury found the automaker one-third responsible for the crash; it found the driver of the Tesla, who settled with the plaintiffs and testified during the trial, responsible for the other two-thirds.

In a written statement, Tesla spokesperson Jeff McAndrews, said that the “verdict is wrong.” Citing “substantial errors of law and irregularities at trial,” he said Tesla would appeal.

The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 crash in the Florida Keys in which the driver of a Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode allegedly came to a T-intersection and, failing to see that the roadway was ending, kept his foot on the accelerator; the car slammed into a parked vehicle and two people standing nearby. One of the pedestrians, 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon, was killed; her boyfriend, 26-year-old Dillon Angulo, was seriously injured.

Tesla’s lawyers argued that the Model S was not defective and alleged that the driver of the Tesla was fishing for his cell phone at the time of the crash and so was solely responsible.

Tesla’s Autopilot feature has been blamed in dozens of crashes, but this is the first time the company has been found liable for an Autopilot-related crash. The company was found not liable in 2023 for two fatal California crashes. And it has settled several lawsuits out of court, including one involving a high-profile 2018 crash that killed the driver of a Model X in Silicon Valley. In 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pushed Tesla to issue a major Autopilot-related recall after the US roadway safety agency spent two years investigating fatal Autopilot crashes and raised concerns about the system encouraging driver inattention.

Separately, Tesla faced a California administrative hearing last month after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles sued the carmaker, alleging that it misled customers about the limits of Autopilot and its newer and more advanced feature, Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The hearing, which an administrative judge is due to resolve later this year, could result in Tesla losing its license to sell and manufacture vehicles in California for up to 30 days.

During the three-week Miami trial, lawyers representing the plaintiffs argued that Tesla and CEO Elon Musk created false expectations among drivers about Autopilot’s capabilities. Lead attorney Brett Schreiber cited a 2016 press conference in which Musk said Tesla’s vision system meant its cars “should not hit” anything—even “an alien spaceship, a pile of junk metal that fell off the back of a truck.”

Despite the marketing, Tesla manuals maintain that drivers need to stay alert while using Autopilot and be ready to take over driving at a moment’s notice. Tesla added more “nags” to its system following the 2023 recall that require drivers to pay closer attention to the road, and suspends access to Autopilot if the system detects too much inattention. (After testing, Consumer Reports has questioned whether these fixes solve driver inattention.)

“Tesla chose to put its enhanced Autopilot technology on the roadways of this community knowing full well that the leading government agencies for transportation safety in this country … had been telling Tesla for years to make its product safer,” Schreiber said in his opening statement. “For years before this crash and for years after this crash, Tesla ignored those warnings.”