Tesla has settled a wrongful death lawsuit over a 2023 crash in which a Model S on Autopilot slammed into a parked fire truck, killing the driver and seriously injuring his brother.
The confidential settlement, filed in California federal court, lets Tesla avoid a jury trial that would have put Elon Musk’s own Autopilot claims in front of jurors.
A Model S on Autopilot at 70 mph
The crash happened on February 18, 2023, at around 4 a.m. on Interstate 680 in Contra Costa County, California. Genesis Giovanni Mendoza Martinez, 31, was driving his 2014 Tesla Model S with Autopilot engaged when the car plowed into a county ladder fire truck parked across lanes at an earlier accident scene.
The Model S was traveling roughly 70 mph. Mendoza was killed. His brother, Caleb Mendoza, was in the passenger seat and was seriously injured.
The case, Caleb Mendoza et al. v. Tesla, Inc. (No. 24-cv-08738-VC), was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California before Judge Vince Chhabria. The plaintiffs were represented by Singleton Schreiber — the same firm behind a growing docket of fatal Autopilot cases against Tesla.
The claim Tesla didn’t want in front of a jury
The lawsuit didn’t rest only on a product defect theory. It alleged that Tesla and Musk misrepresented what Autopilot could actually do, leading Mendoza to over-trust a Level 2 driver-assistance system marketed with a name that implies far more.
In a May 2025 ruling, Judge Chhabria let that argument stand. He dismissed the plaintiffs’ concealment claim but allowed the fraudulent misrepresentation claims to proceed, finding the “Autopilot” name itself “plausibly misleading” — and ruling that Musk’s public statements, including that Autopilot was “probably better” than a human driver, were legally actionable.
That ruling set up a trial in which Musk’s years of autonomy promises would become evidence. Instead, Tesla settled. The terms were not disclosed.
Tesla keeps buying its way out of a verdict
The settlement fits a now-familiar pattern: Tesla resolves its fatal Autopilot and Full Self-Driving cases quietly, right before they reach a jury.
The one time it didn’t, it lost badly. A Florida federal jury hit Tesla with a historic $243 million verdict in a 2019 Autopilot death, and the judge refused to throw it out in February. Since then, Tesla has moved to settle case after case, including a fatal Full Self-Driving pedestrian crash in June.
The pressure is only building. Tesla is now facing up to $14.5 billion in Autopilot and FSD lawsuits, and the plaintiffs’ bar has been emboldened by the Florida win.
What makes these cases hard to litigate in the open is Tesla’s data. As we detailed in our investigation, Tesla hides the fatal Autopilot and FSD crashes buried in its federal safety reports — redacting crash narratives on 99.9% of its filings every year since 2019, while automakers like GM, Ford, and Toyota redact almost none.
Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
