MIAMI — A Miami federal jury has sided with plaintiffs suing Tesla over the company’s Autopilot system. Jurors found the company partially liable as they handed down a nine-figure verdict Friday afternoon.
The verdict opens the door to other costly lawsuits and potentially strikes a blow to Tesla’s reputation for safety at a critical time for the company.
The federal lawsuit stems from a crash in Key Largo that killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and seriously injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.
The wreck happened on April 25, 2019 at Card Sound Road and County Road 905.
The two had parked their SUV on the side of the road and were outside at the time, the lawsuit claims, when driver George McGee, using Autopilot, slammed into them at more than 60 miles per hour after plowing through a caution light and stop sign. The crash ultimately killed Benavides Leon and injured Angulo.
After the crash, the Tesla driver claimed “he dropped (his) phone and bent down to retrieve it from the floorboard” at the time of the collision, the lawsuit states.
Their families argued Tesla’s Autopilot system failed to prevent the crash and that the company deceptively marketed the Autopilot as being more powerful and comprehensive than it was.
Tesla insisted McGee was solely at fault.
The federal jury found McGee 67% responsible and the automaker 32% responsible.
In addition to a punitive award of $200 million, the jury said Tesla must also pay $43 million in compensatory damages, bringing the total borne by the company to $243 million.
Some on the Tesla side shook their heads as the verdict was read.
The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have been dismissed and, when that didn’t happen, settled by the company to avoid the spotlight of a trial.
“This will open the floodgates,” said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case. “It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.”
Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.
Tesla, in a statement, called Friday’s verdict “wrong” and said it “only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology.”
The company said it plans to appeal.
“Even though this jury found that the driver was overwhelmingly responsible for this tragic accident in 2019, the evidence has always shown that this driver was solely at fault because he was speeding, with his foot on the accelerator – which overrode Autopilot – as he rummaged for his dropped phone without his eyes on the road," the statement reads. “To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash.
“This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by plaintiffs’ lawyers blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.”
It’s not clear how much of a hit to Tesla’s reputation for safety the verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash.
Tesla released this statement:
“The jury’s finding that Tesla is only partially liable in this case limits Tesla’s maximum liability at approximately $42.5 million in compensatory damages and $127.5 million in punitive damages at a total of $170 million.
And to be clear, Florida law is explicit that punitive damages have been all but eliminated in product liability cases such as this one, so we are confident that the punitive damage award, at a minimum, and likely this whole verdict, will be overturned by the appellate court.”
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the dollar figure that Tesla, specifically, was ordered to pay. The original version of this story reported the entire verdict amount.
Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
