Tesla’s request to prevent Elon Musk from being questioned in a lawsuit blaming Tesla’s Autopilot for a fatal crash that killed an Apple software engineer has been granted by a US court.
However, the decision which was made by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Evette Pennypacker is conditional on Tesla providing written responses to the deceased driver’s family’s lawyers’ questions about Autopilot and the claims made by the company and its CEO, according to Bloomberg.
The family of Walter Huang, who died in a crash in March 2018 while using Autopilot in his Model X, must attempt less invasive methods to obtain the information they require to construct their case before compelling Musk to testify, the judge said.
Despite filing multiple lawsuits related to Autopilot crashes, plaintiffs have yet to compel Elon Musk to provide testimony under oath.
In 2019, a separate case relating to the death of Jeremy Banner, a Florida judge ruled that Musk did not have to participate in a deposition.
During the hearing, Doris Cheng, a lawyer representing Huang’s family, reportedly argued that there is no way to confirm whether public statements made by Tesla and Musk about Autopilot’s capabilities were supported by data, unless Musk is deposed.
The negligence claims in the case revolve around this crucial question, and even former and current Tesla engineers who have been questioned so far have been unable to provide an answer, Cheng added.
In response, Tesla’s attorney Tom Branigan disagreed asserting that the engineers were deposed for long hours and provided detailed information on the design and development of Autopilot.
Last October, Bloomberg reported that the US Justice Department’s Washington and San Francisco offices, along with investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission, were investigating whether Tesla made misleading statements about its vehicles’ automated-driving capabilities.
A trial for the Huang case, which is set for July 31, if it goes to trial before the Banner case, it will be the first case involving an Autopilot crash to go to trial.
