The family of the 76-year-old Katy woman who was killed when a Tesla Model 3 crashed into a home Friday has filed a lawsuit against Tesla and the driver of the vehicle.
Jennifer and Justin Barbour filed the lawsuit against Tesla and driver Michael Butler in Harris County court Tuesday on behalf of Martha Avila, who died at Memorial Hermann hospital June 19. Jennifer Barbour is the daughter of Avila.
The Barbours allege that Tesla’s driver assistance systems — which they say Butler had engaged at the time of the crash — had a known history of danger, according to the lawsuit. Harris County investigators had not yet determined the cause of the crash as of Wednesday. The Barbours are seeking more than $1 million in relief from the defendants and requesting a jury trial, according to the lawsuit.
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The Barbours allege that Tesla’s driver assistance systems, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, were engaged at the time of the crash and were defective. They seek to hold Tesla liable for design defect, marketing defect and failure to warn. They also accuse Tesla and Butler of gross negligence.
The Barbours allege that Tesla has since 2014 marketed its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems in terms that “regulators, courts and safety experts have found to be actively misleading about the systems’ true capabilities and limitations,” according to the lawsuit.
Autopilot and Full Self-Driving are considered Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, meaning they require the driver to be still “fully engaged in the driving task at all times.” The Barbours allege that Tesla has “routinely obscured” the fact that drivers must remain alert while using the systems.
The lawsuit quotes Musk in 2022, saying that he believes driver assistance systems reduce injury and death. Musk went on to say he believed he had a duty to “deploy (the systems) even though you’re going to get sued and blamed by a lot of people.”
A Harvard Business School article cites the above Musk quote at a 2022 Tesla event.
See here and here for the background and read the rest, it’s a gift link. The plaintiffs cite a lot of sources about Tesla crash history and the claims made about autopilot and full self-driving mode, which ought to make for some heated pretrial motions. As noted, there are investigations of the crash by both the NHTSA and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and I expect they will have a significant effect on the litigation one way or another. This is likely going to take awhile.
I gonna save everyone the cost of a trial: Regardless of the Tesla having a ‘driverless feature’ and, possibly, it being engaged, the person behind the wheel is at fault for doing 80mph in a subdivision, failing to grab the wheel and/or hit the brakes, and hitting a house, killing the occupant.
Case closed.