Tesla rejected a $60 million settlement in the wrongful death case that ended up costing the company $243 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Reuters reported today, citing newly filed legal documents. The proposal stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the families of the victims in a 2019 crash in which a Tesla Model S driver using Autopilot crashed into a parked vehicle, killing a woman and seriously injuring her boyfriend. The lawyers representing the families revealed the settlement offer as part of a request to the court to force Tesla to pay the families’ legal fees. Tesla rejected the settlement offer from the plaintiffs’ lawyers, while countering with a much smaller sum as well as a demand for non-disclosure, said Brett Schreiber, the attorney representing the victims’ families. Read more: [https://www.theverge.com/tesla/765907/tesla-rejected-60-settlement-in-autopilot-case-that-ultimately-cost-it-4-times-that-amount](https://www.theverge.com/tesla/765907/tesla-rejected-60-settlement-in-autopilot-case-that-ultimately-cost-it-4-times-that-amount)
Musk and Trump are the same this way... just fight until the end to avoid taking responsibility for your actions, no matter what it costs.
Elon’s biggest bet seems to be on the judicial system. Like suing apple for not liking grok. He’s going to keep throwing money at this through appeals and he may end up spending more than a quarter billion to avoid paying a quarter billion. All about avoiding that precedent.
Will they have to reflect this $250 million loss as revenue loss this quarter? Or will they sweep it under the rug so it never shows up on their books.
The extra money is great and all, but the real prize here is the sunlight that’s finally being cast upon Tesla’s way of doing business.
It's only a loss if they pay it.
Good.
Let him flail. Everything from the first trial is already going to be public information.
Payment rendered in poop emojis.
Reaching back to my accounting days three decades ago, per GAAP, Tesla will have to show this liability in its FASB statement of financial position (balance sheet) and set aside funds if the liability is probable. I'd guess that a jury award is considered "probable".
One fewer ivory backscratchers this year, I guess.
Ford Pinto anyone?
I wonder if anyone familiar with civil law would comment as to whether the rejection of that offer to settle represents negligence in light of the jury award, especially the punitive damages portion?
My limited knowledge of lawsuits is once a lawsuit gets past summary judgment or has some kind of legitimacy that can hold water in court, corporations settle. I am sure Elon's lawyers have also mentioned how unpopular he has been in the last few years, and how that might affect any lawsuit. This is really basic stuff, how Elon was able to build several hard tech publicly traded companies if he does not understand this simple concept?
5D chess.
To be honest I think it is a bad verdict. I really dislike Tesla as a company, for many reasons. And yes the autopilot features have been far oversold. But I don't see how you can go claim Tesla is in any way responsible for an accident caused by a driver that was not looking at the road and trying to fetch his phone from somewhere in the footwell. Yes autopilot failed, but then again it is a driver aid not a driver replacement.That driver, and nobody or nothing else, should be made responsible for everything.
I don't think he's wrong by making this bet. It's generally anomaly in US for rich people/corporations not to win in courts (that doesn't always mean the first win, but includes dragging cases through appeals, mistrials, prolonged discovery, etc). You win some and lose some, but mostly win some.
The punitive damage amount was so high because of Tesla denying they had the crash data. Once the digital forensic team found it. Tesla’s statement was, “We made a mistake”.
I can not find an answer to this. If Tesla pays their directors with stock options, IE, Musk just got a 20 billion dollar one, does that show up as an expense? IE. Tesla been showing profits for a few years but if they are paying a lot of their workers and directors by diluting shares, that is not a great indication of profit. They really are not making money at that point. Second question. I could understand if the government will not use this as a taxable expense. Being they got the money from shareholders. But could it be, is it put on the financials of public companies to show if a company is actually profitable? IE. Capital up with payroll expense as an offset? I ask this because I feel if companies are paying directors and workers with shares, we are not getting a good picture of the companies health on their financials if it does not show up as an expense.
Right place and right time. Not saying he is dumb but a bunch of shit came together at the exact right time. And the government bailed him out right before they were going to fail.
Pintos were statistically safer than Teslas. Not kidding.
Which was obviously bullshit, as it was actually a series of “mistakes” that could not have happened if a competent person were working the problem.
When your crackpot army of high level programmers can not do a simple data recovery and a third party company needs to come in to recover what was deleted, either you are incompetent or you are intentionally trying to hide something. Neither is a good look.
Let me help you with that: https://www.google.com/search?q=foreseeable+misuse+in+product+liability
More brilliant judgment!
Musk probably wants to replace juries with Xitter polls.
Hahaha 😂 such genius
Paid in doge
Rich people like to tie things up in litigation for decades… keep kicking the can.
I doubt it because Elons pay package is bigger than teslas earnings accumulative since inception of the entire company. It would look like a black hole on a financial quarterly or yearly earnings report.
This is the strategy of Tesla and the word that frightens Speed Bump Chin Boy the most is discovery. Lawyers will do an excellent job of hoovering up details about deficiencies of the car and what the company knew about them. As we all know by rumours, gossip and events that point to weaknesses that were somehow able to pass/fudge government safety standards. I have no doubt that Tesla knows about careless blood spilt on the the asphalt, just as Ford did.
I want more than that. I want tears on a global stage and deportation to SA. I'm sure someone in his family has produced a step sister by now.
First of all it didn't cost them anything yet second of all it's going to get massively reduced. Judges almost always reduce punitive fees. Makes no sense to settle for 60 million. In the end maybe they'll get a couple million out of it
that's assuming the army was dispatched, of course. Let's not fool ourselves, Tesla has plenty of good people skilled in all sorts of stuff. But they might not even get to know their skills could be put to a good use for anythign in particular if people aware of that case won't let them know.
I am pretty sure for the exact same reasons you stated. I would have thought the stock exchange would have dictated that to indicate profits correctly otherwise you are not really showing the cost to operate a company.
It's the Silicon Valley way of breaking stuff and calling it progress as they reinvent trains for the millionth time.
Retail invests in TSLA because of Elon tweet, not because of financials. 99% of them don’t know what an earnings report is.
>as they reinvent trains for the millionth time. They couldn't even build a real one out there. Fucking built a train to nowhere.
That’s somewhat misleading—the case hasn’t gone through appeals, and I’d be somewhat surprised if the jury award holds up in full.
To be sure. But all the same, if you really are looking at a company, you want to see the full picture. I see this with private companies as their profits have to take into consideration the wages of the owner as generally for tax purposes they will take wages equivalent to all of profits so that you do not pay corporate taxes on top of your personal taxes.
How generous of them. But as an investor you also need to understand financials. For example, TSLA superfans who believe strongly in robotaxi still don’t understand that even if Tesla captures the entirety of UBER and Lyft revenue with 0 added operation costs, Tesla would STILL be immensely overvalued. They’re mistaken in believing that “Elon will get robotaxi working” AND in vastly overestimating the revenue significance of it even if it happens.
Which one are you referring to?
If Elon was given a new grant worth $20b that vested immediately, then Tesla would have a $20b expense. I’m not sure how it was structured so can’t say what the accounting would be. The general rules are that if there is a work requirement, then it’s taken into expense over that period of time. If it’s a performance requirement, they you assess whether it probable of occurring or not and taken it into expense over the performance period. But yes, a new grant worth $20b on the grant date with no performance requirement, would be a $20b expense at some pt (depending on the service requirement)
During the trial, which started in July, plaintiffs argued that Tesla’s driver-assist software was at fault for causing a crash that killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides. While driving in Key Largo, Florida, Tesla owner George McGee crashed into Benavides’ vehicle after bending over to grab a phone that he had dropped. McGee told the jury he thought Autopilot “would protect him and prevent a serious crash if he made a mistake,” according to the NYT. It’s not autonomous driving. When Will people get that
Good.
Maybe they’ll get it when fElon stops retweeting some idiot playing with her hair while the car feigns autonomy, and adding the comment “Tesla cars can drive themselves!”
Just enough time for Musk to get his bonuses...
Are you asking about negligence on the part of Tesla’s counsel? The only way that would be is if the attorneys advised Tesla to reject the settlement, and I guarantee you that didn’t happen. If you’re talking about negligence on Tesla’s part, that would have been demonstrated by their actions before the trial.
Did you read the story that Fred published on Electrek the Sunday after the verdict? Apparently the technician pretended to plug the subject MCU into a different Model S, and claimed it was non-functional. I said they need to throw the book at him, just to get him to name the person who told him to do that.
Judges tend not to reduce punitive damages when they are based on an active effort to conceal evidence.
Isn’t he the CEO? It’s like Sam Altman saying the next gpt is agi. It’s like Elizabeth Holmes telling us a drop of blood will transform the medical industry. Or whatever Sam bankmann the crypto scammer guy said. At some point people have to understand what the position entails
I did read the story. I may or may not have a protective order preventing me from sharing some extra info there and sifting through the actual depositions to see what was allowed to be published is not super fun nor easy (did plainsite pick this whole thing yet?) But overall I agree the technician actions are really strange and probably run afoul of at least some laws and as such the judge should do something serious about it (but I am no lawyer so I only have a vague idea of possible options here)
The entire bull thesis for Tesla rests upon the idea that Tesla has the most real world data and therefore should reach true autonomous vehicles faster. The fact that they are so scared about sharing data in a case that -- on the face should favor Tesla -- shows there's something very wrong in Tesla's public claims about their progress.
I don’t remember the exact timing, but sometime in the next few weeks the full discovery and trial transcripts are due to drop.
You're talking about a dude who: * In the most public fashion told his advertisers to "go fuck themselves." * Pissed off the left by offering to buy the election for the Right. * Then pissed off the right by calling their leader a pedophile. There are many simple concepts he does not understand.
>It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it
> on the face should favor Tesla Why should it favor Tesla? Do I need to paste the Google search results from “foreseeable misuse in product liability” for you, too?
even when they do, I think finding them is a bit of a hassle? Like you have to go to some special websites for lawyers and such? But yes, seeing what was allowed to be published would be great (I doubt everything-everything would be published)
He would have to believe that was the case first. And even so it would get appealed and reduced on appeal
This is the opposite of how companies handle litigation. They have *zero* interest in prolonging these disputes. It only costs them more money and time to do so (not to mention the bad press). It is way cheaper to settle early, which is what happens in the vast majority of cases. They do not generally go to trial as you implied. In a small fraction of examples, a company acting as a plaintiff may want to prolong a lawsuit for obvious reasons (to enhance a settlement or just fuck with the defense). But the vast majority of litigation firms deal with is as a defendant.
At some point there should be jail, not fines, for these security frauds we call CEOs. But who am I kidding, that ain't happening in the US of A-holes.
Either you haven’t read the happenings of the trial, or you’re an Elon fanboy. There’s no other way you could make that argument.
Oh to be sure. But more so, if the wages are not fully indicated on their financial statements, they may have been in the red instead of showing profits the last few years.
They couldn't appeal a settlement.
He too was hurt in the crash. Since the court has ruled Tesla is majority liable, the driver is now going to sue and collect his millions for pressing down on the gas while fetching a cell phone right through a stop sign.
Such requires notice be given to the user to not misuse the product. This driver was warned repeatedly on the same day of the accident.
CHSR probably.
That's the incompetent California government, not Silicon Valley
I have the comma.ai and Nissan pro pilot and it absolutely would have been ok in this scenario in most instances. But it uses multiple cameras AND RADAR.
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