A jury has found Tesla partially liable for a fatal 2019 crash in Key Largo, Florida, and has ordered the company to pay $329 million in total damages — $200 million of which are punitive. The verdict marks a significant blow for the automaker, which has long argued that drivers are responsible for staying alert when using its driver assistance systems like Autopilot.
The crash involved George McGee, whose Tesla — allegedly on Autopilot — plowed into a young couple standing off the road after he momentarily looked away to retrieve a dropped cellphone. The impact killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and seriously injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.
After less than a day of deliberation, an eight-person jury concluded that Tesla’s technology shared part of the blame. According to The Washington Post, the system failed to alert McGee that the road was ending, allowing him to be distracted. “Tesla’s driver assistance technology was partially to blame for enabling the driver… to momentarily take his eyes off the road,” the report states.
Despite Tesla’s repeated disclaimers that “it is your responsibility to stay alert, drive safely and be in control of your vehicle at all times,” the court still handed down one of the largest ever judgments against the company. The breakdown includes $35 million awarded to Benavides’ mother, $24 million to her father, and $70 million to Angulo.
Joel Smith, Tesla’s attorney, emphasized in closing arguments that “He [McGee] said he was fishing for his phone… That happens in any car. That isolates the cause. The cause is he dropped his cellphone.”
Tesla has not yet confirmed whether it will appeal.
The ruling comes as scrutiny continues to mount over Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems — even though recent data shows FSD is 26 times safer than the average U.S. driver. Still, this isn’t Tesla’s first crash involving the software in Florida — a Model 3 on Autopilot slammed into a parked police cruiser back in 2021.
Update (August 2, 2025): Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed in a post on X that the company plans to appeal the verdict.
