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Cases › physical harm › LR-2026-0667

Florida appeal over $243M Tesla Autopilot crash verdict

Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change

Developing: a major or severe case captured in the last 72 hours. Later changes are logged on the corrections page.

Status: action reported, no fix

Severity severe
Reported 20 Jul 2026
Industry automotive

No source states: loss or records, developer and model, agent tool, could do, deployer.

Severity severe: Safety of life test met: the quoted sentence records a death, Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, was killed.

A Tesla Model S with Autopilot engaged was involved in a fatal crash in Key Largo on April 25, 2019. The driver, George McGee, dropped his phone and bent down to retrieve it, and the car ran a stop sign and a flashing red light at roughly 62 mph before striking a parked Chevrolet Tahoe. Naibel Benavides Leon was killed and Dillon Angulo was severely injured. In August 2025 a Miami federal jury found Tesla 33% liable and assessed punitive damages against Tesla. U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom upheld the judgment on February 20. In July 2026 the Florida Attorney General and other states asked the 11th Circuit to overturn the verdict or reduce the punitive award, and the case remains pending.

What happened

1 · What it was doingThe driver had Autopilot engaged while he dropped his phone and bent down to retrieve it.
2 · What went wrongThe car ran a stop sign and a flashing red light at roughly 62 mph and struck a parked Chevrolet Tahoe.

What was done

Florida is asking the federal appeals court to wipe out the $243 million verdict.

Risks

Physical harm
Primary43 incidents

Sorted by rule from the case's fields; not yet read from the sources.

Controls

Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:

Harness

Stop control

Application

Physical safety interlocks · Human approval for high-impact actions · Live behaviour monitoring · Adversarial testing before deployment

Evidence

No source states: what it reached or did, how it was caught, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off.

Show the full account: 3 items from the primary sources

What happened, in order

  1. February 20 U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom upheld the judgment.
  2. August 2025 Miami federal jury found Tesla 33% liable and assessed punitive damages.
  3. October 2025 Trial judge sanctioned Tesla for willful and deliberate violations after crash data was recovered.
Show every field, with its source and grade

What happened

When it happened
2019-04-25
C one secondary source states it
Earliest source we hold
2026-07-20
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown
What went wrong
physical harm
C one secondary source states it

Impact

Severity
severe
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown
Kind of harm
bodily harm
C one secondary source states it
Can it be undone
no
C one secondary source states it
Why this severity
Safety of life test met: the quoted sentence records a death, Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, was killed.
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown

Context

Industry
automotive
C one secondary source states it
Country
United States
C one secondary source states it

Notes on gaps

The record treats Autopilot as the system, although it is a driver-assistance feature. Date of disclosure is not stated in the sources and is left out. The July 20 publication date is not used as an event date. Reader comments and the opinion sections are not used as facts. No remediation was stated, so the remediations list is empty.

LR-2026-0667 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON