A Florida judge found "reasonable evidence" that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was aware of a dangerous defect in the automaker's Autopilot system but still allowed the cars to be driven, according to a report.
Circuit Court Judge Reid Scott greenlit a lawsuit against Tesla last week that accuses the company of intentional misconduct and gross negligence over a fatal crash involving the Autopilot driver assistant system, Reuters reported.
The ruling comes after Tesla won two product liability lawsuits in California earlier this year that focused on its Autopilot system. Musk has grand ambitions for Tesla's Autopilot, stating in July that the electric-vehicle maker could achieve fully autonomous driving by the end of this year.
The Florida lawsuit arose out of a 2019 crash north of Miami in which owner Stephen Banner's Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had turned onto the road, shearing off the Tesla's roof and killing Banner. A trial set for October was delayed, and has not been rescheduled.
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According to court documents, Judge Scott found evidence that Tesla "engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous" and that Musk's public statements about the technology "had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the products."
The judge ruled that the plaintiff, Banner's wife, may argue that Tesla's warnings in its manuals and "clickwrap" agreement were inadequate, Reuters reported.
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Scott also compared the accident to an "eerily similar" 2016 fatal crash involving Joshua Brown, who died after Autopilot failed to detect cross traffic and led the car underneath a tractor trailer at a high speed.
"It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the 'Autopilot' failing to detect cross traffic," the judge wrote, per Reuters.
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He also pointed to a 2016 video that showed a Tesla using Autopilot to drive without human intervention. A disclaimer at the start of the video says the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. "The car is driving itself," the video said.
Scott said the video shows a situation "not dissimilar" to what happened to Banner, Reuters reported.
"Absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesn’t currently exist in the market," he wrote.
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Banner's attorney, Lake "Trey" Lytall III, said they are "extremely proud of this result based in the evidence of punitive conduct."
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters contributed to this report.
