Last Updated on: 8th July 2025, 02:29 pm
On the night of April 25, 2019, George McGee, a resident of Key Largo, Florida, was driving his 2019 Tesla Model S on a secondary road near his home. That road ended at a T intersection with Card Sound Road. At that intersection were a stop sign and a red flashing blinker. One the other side of the intersection were four large red reflectors mounted on metal polls and a yellow sign with a double ended arrow pointing to the left and the right.
Image retrieved from Tesla dashcam.
There is little dispute that McGee’s Tesla failed to slow at the intersection, plunged through the wall of reflectors at 62 mph, and smashed broadside into a black Chevy Tahoe, pushing it violently sideways into two people standing nearby — Naibel Benavides Leon and Dillon Angulo. Benavides Leon was killed and Angulo was severely injured.
And what was McGee doing while all this was going on? Searching for his cell phone which he had dropped. When he called police after the crash, he said, “Oh my God, I wasn’t looking. I don’t know what happened. I ended up missing the turn. I was looking down,” and “I dropped my phone. Oh my God.”
What Should The Tesla Have Done?
Prior to the crash, McGee had activated the car’s Autopilot system and set the Traffic Aware Cruise Control to 45 mph. Data retrieved from the car after the crash showed McGee had manually increased the car’s speed to 62 mph. He stated that his car gave him no visual or audible warning prior to the crash. Attorneys for the estate of Benavides Leon contend that the Tesla Autopilot system malfunctioned and that malfunction was a proximate cause of the crash.
Specifically, the dispute centers on what happened, or should have happened, after McGee manually overrode the TACC by pressing the accelerator and increasing the speed of his vehicle to more than the 45 mph the system was set for. Tesla filed a motion for summary judgment, a legal device that basically says, “assuming everything the plaintiff says is true, the defendant is not legally responsible for what happened.”
On June 26, 2025, US District Court judge Beth Bloom denied Tesla’s motion for summary judgment, which means that unless something else happens to delay the case, a trial will begin in US District Court in Miami on Monday, June 14, 2025.
Tesla Has A History Of Obfuscation
CleanTechnica readers, being an unusually savvy group, will understand most of what is involved with this legal action. They know about the video that was on the Tesla website for years that shows a Tesla supposedly driving itself while an announcer says “the driver is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” They also know that video was mostly a fabrication.
Readers are also painfully aware of the multiple instances in which Tesla automobiles operating in Autopilot mode or Full Self Driving mode have slammed into emergency vehicles — with their warning lights flashing brightly — without slowing down or changing direction to avoid a collision. They know about the Tesla that steered itself onto train tracks recently and was struck by an oncoming train or the robotaxi in Austin that drove itself the wrong way in a left turn lane. Fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic in that lane at the time.
Tesla has made all the usual noises about how drivers are ultimately responsible for controlling their cars, but the attorneys for the deceased have submitted reams of information from the driver, George McGee, that show he was only dimly aware of what the Autopilot system could and could not do.
Specifically, Tesla contends that when a driver manually accelerates past the set speed for the Traffic Aware cruise control, certain features of the Autopilot system are disabled — particularly forward emergency braking.
Facts In Dispute
In a footnote to her opinion denying the motion for summary judgement by Tesla, the judge noted, “The Parties do not dispute that the Vehicle’s ‘Autopilot’ remains engaged even when the accelerator pedal is depressed by 20%” or that “McGee did not depress the accelerator by more than 20% prior to the accident. Therefore, there is no dispute that the Autopilot was still engaged, to some degree, as the Vehicle approached the intersection. There is also no dispute that McGee accelerated the vehicle to 62 miles per hour.
“Therefore, there is no material dispute that McGee temporarily overrode the TACC’s 45 mph speed restriction in the 30 seconds leading up to the collision. The only dispute is whether accelerating the Vehicle past the TACC max speed temporarily disabled the Autopilot’s longitudinal control function and the automatic emergency brake function.” That is what the jury will be asked to decide, after hearing from a flotilla of experts presented by both sides.
What Did McGee Know & When Did He Know It?
McGee certainly did not seem to be fully aware of what the car could or could not do before and after the crash. He acknowledged in depositions that he understood he was ultimately responsible for controlling the car. In her decision, the judge noted that “McGee believed that the Vehicle’s features would ‘keep him in the lane, avoid crashes…direct him to where he needed to go…help him see any ongoing traffic, and would help him stop or turn or avoid collisions.’”
McGee also thought “that when the Vehicle was on Autopilot, it ‘would stop regardless of any car…and if there was a parked car, it would stop and not hit it.’ Therefore, because the Vehicle did not prevent the collision, McGee believes the Vehicle’s Autopilot system, automatic emergency braking system, and front collision warning malfunctioned at the time of the accident.”
“On the day of the collision, McGee did not fulfill his role as a Level 2 driver, and if he had, the Parties agree the collision ‘could have been avoided or mitigated.’ Notwithstanding his delayed reaction and his failure to observe multiple traffic signals, in the last five seconds, McGee was [still] in a better position than Tesla to avoid the crash.”
The jury is going to have its hands full trying to understand the details of this case. Attorneys for both sides will need to skillfully avoid overloading the jurors with technical details that only an engineer would understand. Jurors don’t like to be talked down to, but attorneys — by nature and by training — often don’t know how to connect with folks who don’t have deep technical knowledge. Sometimes the legal niceties are less important than knowing how to explain complex issues in a way that ordinary people can understand.
Tesla & Punitive Damages
What makes this case especially interesting is that, in the complaint, the plaintiff’s attorney requested that punitive damages be awarded. Punitive damages are an area of the law that everybody thinks they understand but few actually do. Even though this case is being tried in federal court, the law in Florida controls. Florida Statute § 768.72 says:
In any civil action, no claim for punitive damages shall be permitted unless there is a reasonable showing by evidence in the record or proffered by the claimant which would provide a reasonable basis for recovery of such damages.
[At trial, a] defendant may be held liable for punitive damages only if the trier of fact, based on clear and convincing evidence, finds that the defendant was personally guilty of intentional misconduct or gross negligence.
The judge wrote in her decision, “Under the statute, intentional misconduct requires that “the defendant had actual knowledge of the wrongfulness of the conduct and a high probability that injury or damage to the claimant would result and, despite that knowledge, intentionally pursued that course of conduct, resulting in injury or damage. To establish gross negligence, the plaintiff must show ‘the defendant’s conduct was so reckless or wanting in care that it constituted a conscious disregard or indifference to the life, safety, or rights of persons exposed to such conduct.’”
“The reason for these high standards is because ‘the purpose of punitive damages is not to further compensate the plaintiff, but to punish the defendant for its wrongful conduct and deter similar misconduct by it and other actors in the future.’ Accordingly, the Florida Supreme Court has made it clear that in automobile products liability cases, the standard is ‘whether the car manufacturer exhibited a reckless disregard for human life equivalent to manslaughter by designing and marketing the vehicle.’”
“Here, the record reflects sufficient evidence, even ignoring the 2023 Recall, that would allow Plaintiffs to pursue punitive damages in this case. As early as 2016, NTSB recommended in their crash investigation report that Tesla ‘incorporate system safeguards that limit the use of automated vehicle control systems to those conditions for which they were designed’. The Plaintiffs also point to numerous public statements Tesla made which arguably misrepresented the risk and limitations of the Autopilot system and improperly suggested that issues present in the crash were resolved
“Therefore, because Tesla refused to geo-fence the Autopilot system despite being warned of the dangers and despite record evidence indicating that Tesla was capable of curing the issue, a reasonable jury could find that Tesla acted in reckless disregard of human life for the sake of developing their product and maximizing profit.”
Judicial Discretion
And so, as part of their case, attorneys for the Plaintiff will be allowed to present their case that Tesla should be liable for punitive damages. This is new territory for Tesla. Corporate insurance policies do not cover punitive damages, which means, if awarded, the company must pay they directly out of corporate assets. The amount of the award, if any, is entirely in the description of the jury. What sum of money night be enough to convince Tesla to amend its ways?
It is one of the wealthiest corporations in the world today. What might be a crushing blow to you or me might be a mere slap on the wrist to Tesla. Could we be talking about billions? Maybe. Then there is a little known power that judges have known as additur and remittitur. Basically, a judge has the power to overrule a jury verdict if the court considers the award to be excessively high or excessively low.
Lawfare
Elon Musk is a bitter opponent of legal proceedings he doesn’t like. He calls them “lawfare” and disdains them in public. But rest assured that Tesla will appeal any verdict all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary. It may be a decade before the Plaintiff sees a penny from this lawsuit, assuming the jury awards any damages at all.
Based on absolutely nothing but intuition, I think there is a possibility this case gets settled either before the trial begins next Monday or while the jury is deliberating. It is not uncommon for settlements to occur under such circumstances because, as every lawyer understands, no one knows what a jury might do. Tesla will want to avoid an award of punitive damages, which could open the floodgates to a slew of similar lawsuits. By the same token, the attorneys for the Plaintiff know Tesla could drag this out for years.
The only suit Tesla has settled that we know of involved the death of Walter Huang, whose Model X drove itself into a highway barrier near San Francisco several years ago. The other advantage of a settlement is the details can be sealed so the public never knows what happened in the back room at the courthouse. That could be very much in Tesla’s best interests in this case. I would expect negotiations to between the two sides to reach a fever pitch over the next few days. Stay tuned.
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