Dillon Angulo, 33, seems at a roadside memorial signal studying “Drive Safely In Memory Naibel Benavidez” subsequent to the positioning of a automotive crash the place a Tesla driver utilizing Autopilot killed her, and left him catastrophically injured in 2019, on Aug. 12, 2025, in Key Largo, Florida.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Tesla has filed a movement to enchantment the verdict in a product legal responsibility and wrongful death lawsuit that would value the corporate $242.5 million if it’s not diminished or overturned.
Elon Musk‘s automaker has requested for the verdict to be tossed or for a brand new trial in Florida’s Southern district court docket.
Gibson Dunn, which is representing Tesla in the enchantment, argued that compensatory damages in the case must be steeply diminished from $129 million to $69 million at most. That would consequence in Tesla having to pay a $23 million award if the prior verdict holding the corporate partially responsible for the crash stands up.
The agency additionally argued that punitive damages must be eradicated or diminished to, at most, thrice compensatory damages because of a statutory cap in the state of Florida.
The suit centered on a fatal crash that occurred in 2019 in Key Largo, Florida, in which George McGee was driving his Tesla Model S sedan whereas utilizing the corporate’s Enhanced Autopilot, {a partially} automated driving system.
While driving, McGee dropped his cell phone and scrambled to select it up. He stated through the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an impediment was in the best way.
McGee’s Model S accelerated via an intersection at simply over 60 miles per hour, hitting a close-by empty parked automotive and its homeowners, who had been standing on the opposite facet of their car.
The collision killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides and severely injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.
A jury in a Miami federal court docket earlier this month stated that Tesla ought to compensate the household of the deceased and the injured survivor, paying a $242.5 million portion of a complete $329 million in damages that they determined had been acceptable.
In their movement to enchantment, Tesla’s legal professionals argue that the Model S car had no design defects, and that even alleged design defects couldn’t be blamed for the crash, which they are saying was induced solely by the driving force.
“For as long as drivers remain at the wheel, any safety feature may embolden a few reckless drivers while enhancing safety for countless others,” the enchantment states. “Holding Tesla liable for providing drivers with advanced safety features just because a reckless driver overrode them cannot be reconciled with Florida law.”
Tesla didn’t reply to a request for extra remark.
Brett Schreiber, lead trial counsel for the plaintiffs in this case, stated in a press release that he believes the court docket will uphold the prior verdict, which shouldn’t be seen as “an indictment of the autonomous vehicle industry, but of Tesla’s reckless and unsafe development and deployment of its Autopilot system.”
“The jury heard all the facts and came to the right conclusion that this was a case of shared responsibility but that does not discount the integral role Autopilot and the company’s misrepresentations of its capabilities played in the crash,” he stated.