Tesla asks court to throw out big damage award in crash by arguing
comments about Musk misled jury
[August 30, 2025] By
BERNARD CONDON
NEW YORK (AP) — The car company run by Elon Musk asked a federal court
Friday to dismiss massive damages awarded to victims of a deadly crash,
arguing that their lawyers had misled the jury by improperly bringing up
the billionaire during the trial.
The filing in Miami federal court seeks to overturn the $243 million
award after a 22-year old student 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 found that
the speeding Tesla driver was mostly to blame but Tesla was also
responsible because of faulty technology.
The case 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 market,” the company said 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 data that, after it was dug up by the
opposing side, helped recreate what went wrong moments before the crash.
Tesla had said 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 case to go to trial at a
pivotal moment for his electric car company. He is trying to convince
Americans that his self-driving technology, improved since the 2019
crash, can be trusted amid ambitious plans to roll out driverless Tesla
robotaxis around the country.
Many 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
told Tesla that they were willing to accept $60 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.
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 The filing by Tesla on Friday asked
the judge to grant it a new trial, throw out the award or at least
vastly reduce it.
The jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its
technology 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 said the technology
had nothing to do with the crash.
The plaintiff lawyers also said Tesla’s decision to even use the
term Autopilot showed 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 said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and
“copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the
technology.
European regulators have complained about Tesla word choices for its
driver assistance software, and have raised questions about whether
it misleads drivers, too. Musk had told 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 case 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 technology too much,” the driver in the Florida
crash, George McGee, said in his testimony. “I believed 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 case, 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 3.5% Friday, after a drop a day earlier when
sales figures out of Europe showed 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.
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