Tesla settles another Autopilot fatal crash lawsuit

Tesla has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. This is not a product recall.This is a manufacturing issue. The sharp edges of the flagship Cybertruck One owner was sent to the emergency room, and now the electric car maker has been forced to settle the lawsuit out of court. Fatal accident involving the company’s vehicle Implements Autopilot advanced driver assistance technology.

Tesla was facing a legal battle over a 2016 accident involving one of its Model S electric cars. Sedan equipped with Autopilot technologyleading to the death of a passenger. Now, the EV maker has settled out of court without going before a jury. Reports Automotive NewsAs explained on the site:

Tesla Inc. has reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit over a 2016 fire that killed a passenger in its Model S, marking the second time in two months that the electric car maker has avoided a jury trial over a fatal accident in California.

The plaintiffs allege that when driver Casey Speckman lost control of his 2015 Model S, the car suddenly accelerated on its own, struck a tree and burst into flames. According to the family’s lawsuit filed in San Jose state court, Speckman’s boss, Kevin McCarthy, who was in the passenger seat, survived the crash but died in the flames caused by the battery exploding. The lawsuit attributes the deaths to “the vehicle’s propensity to catch fire and a defective design of the door latch system that trapped Mr. McCarthy inside the vehicle.”

The plaintiffs alleged that there was a problem with the car Specman was driving, but Tesla maintained throughout the litigation that No problem with the Model SIn fact, the court initially argued that Speckman had his foot on the accelerator pedal before the accident and made no attempt to apply the brakes.

But a motion to dismiss the case was denied after the judge ruled that Tesla had failed to prove that the plaintiffs lacked evidence to disprove its claims. The parties confidentially reached an agreement last week before the case went to court and faced a jury.

The settlement marks the second agreement Tesla has reached this year. The agreement was reached at a high-profile meeting An Apple engineer was killed in 2018 when his Model X went off the road.

This article originally appeared on Jalopnik’s The Morning Shift..