By Mike Scarcella and Abhirup Roy
WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Tesla has settled a wrongful death lawsuit in Florida stemming from a 2018 high-speed crash that killed a teenager riding in one of the electric vehicle maker’s sedans, court records show.
A trial in the lawsuit was set to begin today in Florida state court in Fort Lauderdale against the estate of the driver of the Tesla sedan that crashed.
Tesla was removed as a defendant in a court order on Sunday, leaving only the driver’s estate remaining in the lawsuit. Lawyers for the plaintiff said in a court filing last week that the claim against Tesla had settled.
The parents of the driver, whose estate had been fighting the lawsuit, have said a Tesla technician without their knowledge disabled speed-limiting software that had prohibited the car from traveling above 85 mph (137 kph), court records show.
Tesla has denied wrongdoing and maintained that the driver’s “reckless” operation of the vehicle caused the crash “with or without a speed limiter.” The driver’s lawyers also denied the plaintiff’s claims against them in the lawsuit.
Tesla and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and neither did attorneys representing the plaintiff and the driver’s family in the lawsuit. The terms of the resolution of the lawsuit were not immediately known. A court official confirmed the case settled on Monday.
The plaintiff was a teenage passenger who died in a 2018 crash in a 2014 Tesla Model S that also killed the teenage driver of the vehicle.
The 18-year-old Tesla driver in the crash was speeding at 116 mph on a curve with a 25 mph limit when he lost control and his car slammed into two concrete walls, according to court records.
Tesla has settled some other lawsuits over crashes involving its vehicles. In one recent case, Tesla last year resolved a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of a man who was killed in 2021 after his Tesla crashed and caught fire near Dayton, Ohio.
Tesla denied any wrongdoing in that case. The terms of the resolution were not disclosed.
Tesla in February lost its bid in U.S. federal court in Florida to overturn a $243 million jury verdict over the 2019 crash of an Autopilot-equipped Model S that killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured her boyfriend. Tesla is challenging the verdict on appeal.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; editing by Peter Henderson and Stephen Coates)
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