Earlier this month, a jury discovered Tesla partially answerable for the loss of life of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides, who was killed by a Mannequin S driver who plowed into her and her boyfriend Dillon Angulo. Tesla was ordered to pay the households of the victims $243 million in compensatory and punitive damages, a shocking consequence for an organization that has managed to keep away from taking accountability for crashes involving its partially autonomous software program.
Within the submitting, Tesla’s authorized group mentioned the Mannequin S driver bore all of the accountability for the crash. And they’re requesting the courtroom invalidate the decision, or at the least order a brand new jury trial.
“The $243 million judgment in opposition to Tesla flies within the face of primary Florida tort legislation, the Due Course of Clause, and customary sense,” the corporate’s legal professionals write, noting that McGee had pressed the accelerator to override Autopilot within the seconds earlier than the crash. “Auto producers don’t insure the world in opposition to harms brought on by reckless drivers.”
The legal professionals additionally declare that the plaintiffs mustn’t have been allowed to enter into proof statements from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has lengthy claimed that the corporate’s autos are able to greater ranges of autonomy than they really are. And so they referred to as claims about information coverup on the a part of Tesla — the corporate was accused of withholding digicam information from police investigating the crash — had been false and “infected” the jury in opposition to the corporate.
The movement was filed by attorneys from Gibson Dunn, a agency that represented Tesla in a lawsuit in opposition to a former worker and a tech startup accused of stealing commerce secrets and techniques for a robotic hand.
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