The settlement comes weeks after a Florida jury ordered Tesla to pay $243 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the victims of another fatal 2019 crash of a Model S that was equipped with Autopilot.
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Tesla has hired a trio of prominent new lawyers and asked a judge to find the verdict legally unjustified and throw out the case, or to order a new trial.
The electric-vehicle maker, which has settled several other cases involving its vehicles and self-driving technology, had rejected a $60 million settlement proposal for the Florida lawsuit, a filing showed last month.
The latest settlement notice on Tuesday did not provide the terms of the accord, but said that the dismissal of the lawsuit was conditioned on “satisfactory completion of specified terms.”
The case relates to the death of a 15-year-old boy who was traveling in Alameda County, California with his father in a vehicle when it was rear-ended by a Tesla Model 3, which had Autopilot engaged, causing the victim’s vehicle to roll over and crash into the center barrier. The boy succumbed to his injuries from the collision.
The trial was scheduled to start in about a month in Alameda County Superior Court. A judge in the Alameda Superior Court on Tuesday vacated the scheduled trial, according to the court order.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
A lawsuit following another fatal 2019 crash involving Autopilot is set to go to trial on October 20 in Los Angeles county.
Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco, Mike Scarcella in Washington, D.C. and Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli
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Abhirup Roy is a U.S. autos correspondent based in San Francisco, covering Tesla and the wider electric and autonomous vehicle industry. He previously reported from India on global corporations, capital markets regulation, white-collar crime, and corporate litigation. Contact him at (415) 941-8665 or connect securely via Signal on abhiruproy.10
