On Monday, the wrongful death lawsuit involving a deceased Apple engineer and Tesla was finally settled by the latter after some years in court.
Walter Huang, an engineer employed by Apple, was driving home when his Model X SUV crashed headlong into a California highway barrier. Mr Huang’s family sued Tesla for wrongful death, claiming there were issues with Tesla’s safety and design protocols. At the time of his death, Huang was married with two children. The case was heard in Santa Clara in a California Superior Court.
The National Transportation Safety Board had previously investigated the car crash back in 2020 and released its findings. They found that Tesla’s tech was partly to blame for the accident. The other causes were problematic road construction and driver distraction.
The federal agency believed that Huang must have been on his mobile phone playing a video game while the car had its auto-driving feature, Autopilot, engaged. The third factor was a combination of barriers placed wrongly coupled with the faded lane markings.
During court proceedings, attorneys representing Huang highlighted social media and marketing messages that indicated that autopilot made driving Teslas safe. This would then raise the question of how Mr. Huang’s Tesla failed to give any warning when it approached the barrier.
However, some Tesla emails released as court exhibits displayed discussions between Tesla engineers and executives. They uncovered how many Tesla staff had grown complacent when driving their Teslas with the auto-driving and other premium features turned on. Many mentioned checking their phones and reading work emails while driving with these systems turned on.
Tesla was able to settle the case, even when a civil jury trial was to begin in a San Jose court in the same week. Tesla attorneys gave a rebuttal, citing that Huang was an inattentive driver and an overconfident Tesla fan. Mr. Huang should have known better but decided to focus on his mobile games before his car ran into the barrier. Nevertheless, Tesla was able to seal certain details of the case from the public, such as the amount of settlement and other key information.
It should be mentioned that this is not the first time Tesla has been accused of a disregard for safety and poor engineering of its driving assistance features. This is probably another reason why the company filed for the reports of the case to be made private. Potential lawsuits might be lurking on the corner after finding out that the Huang family got a sizable compensation.
But what if the claimant had been able to prove that Tesla was largely responsible for the death of the former Apple employee? There is likely to be an increase in product liability suits that the company will have to handle in the upcoming years.. It will also make any jury against the electric car company look a bit closer into the production of these cars and how to ensure they are brought to book for any offense committed.
Conclusion
The loss of one Apple employee will not hurt as much as the loss of a major member of the Huang family. Nevertheless, there are lessons to learn from this case. “Tesla should be looking to check out the launch of other products to ensure there are little to no complaints with their devices. There might be many more lawsuits against them,” says lawyer Rusty Levin from Levin & Nalbandyan LLP.
