The Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, was not in a Miami court room on Monday, but his name rose as a jury was selected for the federal trial of a civil lawsuit for the 2019 accident of a Tesla S model that killed a pedestrian and left another seriously injured when the car was in automatic pilot mode.
“Anything involved in Elon Musk is very difficult for me,” said a possible jury.
Another possible jury said that it could not be fair and impartial for Tesla due to “ethics, property, property and what I have seen in the news about their relationship with the government.”
The case is the first lawsuit against Tesla related to fatal accidents that involve the autopilot system of the electric vehicle company to go to trial.
And there is months after Musk’s work as the main advisor of President Donald Trump made the billionaire a family name, synonymous with the massive federal cuts of the workforce carried out by its creation, the Government’s efficiency department.
The richest man of the subsequent fall in the world with Trump on the Federal Federal Reform Law and expenses of the President arrived at the headlines and injected a new drama into votes of the Congress typically bottles.
A Tesla lawyer pointed to the possible jury on Monday: “It is difficult to hear Elon Musk’s name and not have a positive or negative opinion.”
“This case is not a musk. But he is connected to the company,” said the lawyer, since they asked if the jurors had opinions about Musk that they could not put aside.
Three possible jury members raised their hands to say yes, they had Musk opinions that would make them impossible to address the case impartially.
“It would be difficult. I understand that it is not Tesla. But it is very tied to the Tesla brand,” said a man, adding that he was not sure if he could put his points of view aside.
Two other jury members who had previously expressed negative opinions of Musk reiterated those opinions to Tesla’s lawyer.
The lawyer asked a jury about what that man wrote in response to a jury questionnaire about listening to things in the news related to Tesla.
Two other jury members who previously spoke against Musk spoke again and shared the same opinions.
“This case is more than what happened more than for who it is,” said the man.
“I am quite independent,” he said. “I can be impartial, it’s about the accident and what happened.”
Six women and three men were selected for the jury.
Naibel Benavides filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court against Tesla, the pedestrian who died from the accident and his boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, who was seriously injured. The driver of the vehicle, George McGee, is not a defendant in the trial, and according to the reports he established himself with the plaintiffs before.
The plaintiffs claim that the characteristic of the Tesla autopilot was defective and insecure.
It is one of the more than a dozen cases in which Tesla has been sued for fatal or harmful accidents where a driver had used the company’s autopilot or the complete autonomous driving modes (supervised).
FSD is the Premium version of the Partially Automated Driving System of Tesla. The autopilot is a standard option in all new Tesla vehicles.
The Tesla website currently describes the autopilot as “an advanced driver assistance system that improves safety and convenience behind the steering wheel.”
“In addition, with the complete autonomous driving (supervised), you can drive your Tesla vehicle almost anywhere, make lane changes, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects and make left and right turns under its active supervision,” says Tesla.
After the jury was selected, a lawyer’s lawyer said in an opening statement: “The evidence will be shown for years and after this crime, Tesla ignored the warnings.”
“He will listen to evidence about those motivations and why Tesla did what they did,” said the lawyer. “Was Silicon Valley’s spirit quickly and break things? That will be the determination.”
“What is not in dispute is that the driver who crashed was neglected, distracted, on his phone and dropped it, then grabbed him,” said the lawyer. “He approached my client at approximately 60 miles per hour.”
“This is a case on shared responsibility. Tesla will not be responsible for the failures of its autopilot system. The evidence will show that each actor needs a stage and Tesla prepares the scenario for the preventable actions that bring us here,” said the lawyer.
Tests will be introduced in the trial that shows that Musk made public statements about “superhuman” sensors in Tesla vehicles, the lawyer told the jury.
At a conference, Musk said the car was “safer than a human,” according to the lawyer.
Tesla, in a statement provided to NBC News, said: “The evidence clearly shows that this accident had nothing to do with Tesla autopilot technology. Instead, such as so many unfortunate accidents since cell phones were invented, this was caused by a distracted driver.”
“For his credit, he assumed the responsibility of his actions because he was looking for his fallen cell phone while pressing the accelerator, accelerating and canceling the car system at the time of the accident. In 2019, when this happened, there was no accident avoidance technology that could have avoided this tragic accident,” the company said.
