Florida AG seeks to erase Tesla's $243M Autopilot verdict
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a July 9 amicus brief asking the 11th Circuit to throw out the $243 million verdict entirely, or alternatively slash the $200 million punitive award to three times compensatory damages, invoking Florida's statutory 3:1 cap.
- Alabama and Georgia attorneys general joined the multi-state brief alongside Florida.
- The August 2025 Miami jury found Tesla 33% liable in the fatal April 25, 2019 Key Largo Autopilot crash that killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon, assigning Tesla roughly $43 million of about $129 million in compensatory damages plus $200 million in punitives.
- U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom upheld the verdict on February 20, 2026, and in October 2025 had sanctioned Tesla for "willful" and "deliberate" discovery violations after an independent researcher recovered crash data Tesla had told plaintiffs did not exist.
- Uthmeier's fundraising committee accepted a $25,000 donation roughly three weeks before the filing from a political committee tied to the Southern Group, a Tallahassee lobbying firm that recently began representing Tesla specifically on advanced driver-assistance system liability.
- Florida Senate Bill 1616, which would have limited ADAS manufacturer liability and narrowed punitive damages, died in the Judiciary Committee on March 13 — but sponsor Sen. Tom Leek is in line to become Senate president after 2030 and can refile next session.
- Uthmeier was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a known ally of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who spent at least $10 million backing DeSantis's 2024 presidential run — a campaign Uthmeier managed for a stretch.
Why it matters: Capping punitives at 3:1 compensatory would functionally defang the only mechanism that has let a jury weigh Tesla's Autopilot marketing against what the system actually does — and SB 1616's death in committee is a delay, not a defeat, given Leek's path to Senate president. For plaintiffs in the Benavides case and the $14.5 billion in other Autopilot litigation Tesla now faces, the brief is the legal argument; the donation timing and a refileable statute are the political machinery around it.
