A jury in Florida found Tesla partially responsible for a 2019 crash in that a Model S sedan with self-driving software killed one pedestrian and seriously injured another.

The plaintiffs argued that the assistance system, called Autopilot, should have alerted the driver and applied the brakes before the crash.

Tesla maintained that the driver, George McGee, was at fault and called the verdict “wrong” in a statement to the BBC, while vowing to appeal the ruling.

Now, the company will have to pay up to $243 million in punitive and compensatory damages.

The verdict represents a setback for Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, who has touted self-driving technology as crucial to the company's future.

Tesla shares tumbled on the news, down nearly 2% at the close in US markets, which also ended the week in the red.

“Test tracks”

Following the verdict, plaintiffs' lawyers claimed that Musk had misrepresented the capabilities of Autopilot, the company's driver-assistance program.

“Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways but deliberately chose not to restrict its use elsewhere, while Elon Musk was telling the world that Autopilot drove better than humans,” lawyer Brett Schreiber told the BBC.

Schreiber He claimed that Tesla and Musk had long propped up the company's valuation with "self-driving propaganda at the cost of human life." "Tesla's lies turned our roads into test tracks for its fundamentally flawed technology," he added. The company was sued by the family of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon, who died after being struck by a Model S at a T-intersection in the Florida Keys in 2019. Her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, suffered lifelong injuries and was also involved in the lawsuit.

The court heard that the driver, McGee, lost sight of the road when she dropped her phone as she approached the intersection, causing her car to continue through it and crash into a parked SUV on the other side. The two victims were close together.

Accountability

After a three-week trial, the jury awarded a total of $329 million. That is, $129 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages, intended to deter Tesla from future harmful behavior. Of this total amount, Tesla will be responsible for paying one-third of the compensation ($42.5 million) and the entire $200 million in punitive damages, but according to the company, the punitive damages are likely to be limited to a lower amount. "Today's verdict is wrong and only contributes to harming automotive safety and jeopardizing Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and deploy life-saving technology," Tesla said in a statement. Tesla said that the evidence presented in the trial showed that the driver was solely at fault, as he was speeding with his foot on the accelerator, which overrode Autopilot, while looking at his phone and not the road.

“To be clear, no car in 2019, nor any today, would have prevented this accident,” Tesla stated. “This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who blamed the car when the driver, from day one, admitted and accepted responsibility.”

While there have been other federal lawsuits related to Autopilot in fatal crashes, Tesla has reached settlements in previous cases.

Last year, Tesla settled a lawsuit over a 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer after his Model X crashed into a highway barrier while he was operating the company’s Autopilot software.

The Florida case, which ended Friday, was the first to go to a jury.

At trial, McGee testified that his idea of Tesla Autopilot was that it would “help me if I crashed” or “made a mistake,” and that he felt the program had failed him.

McGee settled a separate lawsuit with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed sum.

Tesla has come under intense scrutiny for its Autopilot and self-driving technology, with critics applauding the jury's decision.

"Tesla is finally being held accountable for its flawed designs and grossly negligent engineering practices," said Missy Cummings, a robotics professor at George Mason University.

The verdict comes as Tesla struggles with declining sales, partly due to Musk's political activities.