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Tesla has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently. If it’s not recalls on its products, then it’s manufacturing issues, like sharp edges on its flagship Cybertruck leaving one owner in the emergency room. Now, the electric vehicle maker has been forced to settle a case out of court following a deadly crash involving one of its cars running the Autopilot advanced driver assistance tech.
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Tesla was facing a court battle over a 2016 crash involving a Model S electric sedan equipped with the Autopilot tech, which resulted in the death of a passenger. Now, the EV maker has settled the case out of court without going before a jury, reports Automotive News. As the site explains:
Tesla Inc. has reached a deal to resolve a lawsuit over the death of a Model S passenger in a fiery 2016 crash, marking the second time in two months the electric-vehicle maker has avoided a jury trial in California over a fatal wreck.
The plaintiffs claimed that driver Casey Speckman lost control of the 2015 Model S when the car suddenly accelerated on its own, hitting a tree and bursting into flames. Speckman’s boss, Kevin McCarthy, who was in the passenger seat, allegedly survived the impact but died in the blaze ignited by a battery explosion, according to his family’s complaint in state court in San Jose. The suit blamed the “propensity of the vehicle to catch fire, as well as the defective design of the door latch system entrapping him in the vehicle.”
While the claimants argued there were issues with the car that Speckman was driving, Tesla maintained through the whole process that there were no issues with the Model S. In fact, it initially argued that Speckman kept her foot on the accelerator pedal and didn’t attempt to hit the brake before crashing.
However, the company lost its bid to dismiss the case when a judge ruled that Tesla couldn’t prove that the plaintiffs had no evidence to refute its own version of events. Before the case could head to court and face a jury, the two parties reached a confidential agreement last week.
The settlement is the second such deal reached by Tesla this year, following an agreement that was reached in a high-profile suite involving an Apple engineer who was killed in 2018 when their Model X veered off the road.
A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik’s The Morning Shift.
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