Tesla reached a confidential settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit over a fatal Autopilot crash in California, less than two months before a jury trial set for October 26, 2026, Drive Tesla Canada reported on September 3. The outlet cited Law360 for the settlement details.
The crash happened around 4 a.m. on February 18, 2023, on Interstate 680 in Contra Costa County. A 2014 Tesla Model S traveling about 71 mph struck a county ladder truck that was positioned across the roadway at the scene of an earlier collision. Autopilot had been active for about 12 minutes before impact.
The driver, 31-year-old Genesis Giovanni Mendoza Martinez, died. His brother and passenger, Caleb Mendoza, was seriously injured.
The family sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs argued that Tesla and CEO Elon Musk overstated the capabilities of Autopilot, a Level 2 driver-assistance system, and led the driver to place too much trust in it.
In May 2025, Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed a concealment claim but allowed fraudulent misrepresentation claims to proceed. He found the Autopilot name plausibly misleading and allowed claims based on certain Musk statements, including a remark that Autopilot was probably better than a human driver.
The settlement terms were not disclosed, and the report included no statement from Tesla. The article also noted a separate Florida case in which a federal jury awarded $243 million over a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash, and a judge later declined to overturn that verdict.
Source: Drive Tesla Canada - https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-settles-autopilot-fire-truck-crash-lawsuit/