Two California lawsuits filed against Tesla as a result of crashes that the plaintiffs claimed were caused by cars’ out-of-control Autopilot driving have been settled out of court in recent days.
The settlements were reported by several media outlets.
In a case that had been originally filed in Alameda County Court, the settlement is with the family of a teenager killed in a crash involving a Tesla car operating on Autopilot.
The other settled case relates to the death in December 2019 of two people who were traveling through an intersection in Gardena, California, in a Honda Civic when a Tesla Model S, equipped with Autopilot, failed to stop at a red light at high speed and crashed into the victims’ vehicle.
Both settlements come just weeks after Tesla was hit with a judgment of $243 million–just one third of the total penalty ordered by a jury–in a Florida court. The driver was assessed the other two-thirds.
Various media services that contacted Tesla after the reports of the two latest California settlements received no comment from the auto maker.
The settlements are the latest instances of the electric vehicle manufacturer avoiding going to trial over fatalities involving the company’s autonomous driving system. For example, Tesla settled a California case in April 2024 involving a driver whose car was operating under Autopilot when he was killed after the car crashed into a highway barrier in 2018.
According to the original lawsuit involving the crash in Alameda County, Benjamin Maldonado Escudero was driving with his son on interstate 880 on August 24, 2019. He was changing lanes, according to the suit, when “suddenly and without warnings (his) vehicle was rear-ended by a Tesla Model 3.”
Escudero’s car rolled over and crashed into the highway’s center barrier wall, and his son was killed after being ejected from the vehicle. Maldonado also suffered back injuries in the crash.
The driver of the Tesla, Romeo Yalung, had his vehicle in Autopilot mode. The lawsuit said Yalung’s Tesla was moving “in excess of the speed limit and in excess of the speeds of vehicles in the surrounding lanes.”
Yalung, seeing Escudero’s car moving into his lane, attempted to take over the driving of the car. But the lawsuit said he “was not able to control, brake, slow or avoid the collision.” His car his Escudero’s at “freeway speeds and at speeds that were unsafe for the conditions.”
The lawsuit said Tesla models with the Autopilot mode “(contains) design and manufacturing defects which posed an unreasonable risk or injury or death to consumers…and to motorists sharing the road (with its vehicles.)”
Trial had not begun
A trial in the case had not begun. But various motions to compel or block testimony by certain witnesses had been flying through the lawsuit’s docket as recently as the first weeks of September.
In the second California case that news reports said was settled in recent days, a 2019 crash in Gardena, California in Los Angeles County involved a car moving at about 74 miles per hour, according to a news report. It went through a red light, crashed into another car and killed two people. In that case, the driver, Kevin George Aziz Riad, was charged with manslaughter. (He ultimately pleaded no contest and was sentenced to two years’ probation).
Big decision in Florida
The California settlements comes just a few weeks after an early August verdict that went against Tesla, with a judgment of $243 million, in a Florida case that also alleged the company’s Autopilot system failed to brake and, according to one news report, “accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour.” It crashed into a parked car whose owners were standing nearby. One was killed and the other was injured.
According to an article in Insurance Journal about the latest California settlements, Tesla was victorious in two other California lawsuits in 2023 involving crashes and allegations of out-of-control Autopilot operations. It reported on a Tesla victory from 2023 in a case involving a 2019 crash in Los Angeles County.
The article described the recent Florida verdict as its “first significant setback.”
Tesla also reached a settlement last year in a case involving a driver who was killed when his Tesla on Autopilot smashed into a media barrier. The size of that settlement–as with the two most recent California settlements–was not disclosed.
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