Federal Jury Returns $243 Million Verdict Against Tesla in First Autopilot Wrongful Death Trial
After trial: Judge Bloom denied Tesla's post-trial motion on February 20, 2026. Tesla appealed to the Eleventh Circuit (No.
Won by Singleton Schreiber.
A Miami federal jury found Tesla 33% liable for a 2019 Key Largo crash that killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured her boyfriend, awarding $243 million including $200 million in punitive damages in the first federal trial over a fatal Autopilot accident.
What happened
On April 25, 2019, George McGee was driving his Tesla Model S in Key Largo, Florida with the company's Enhanced Autopilot system engaged. When he bent down to retrieve a dropped phone, the vehicle continued at roughly 62 mph and drove through a stop sign and flashing red light, striking a Chevrolet Tahoe that was parked on the shoulder of the road. Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, was killed. Her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, suffered severe injuries.
The family of Benavides Leon and Angulo brought suit against Tesla in federal court in Miami, represented by Brett Schreiber of Singleton Schreiber. The central theory at trial was that Autopilot could activate outside the operational conditions Tesla said it was designed for, that the system's driver-monitoring relied only on steering torque and failed to detect that McGee had stopped actively driving, and that Tesla's marketing had given consumers a materially false picture of the technology's safety.
After a two-week trial, the jury returned its verdict on August 1, 2025. It found Tesla 33% responsible for the crash, with driver McGee bearing the remaining fault. Jurors awarded $59 million in compensatory damages to the Benavides estate and $70 million to Angulo, then added $200 million in punitive damages against Tesla. After the compensatory awards were reduced to Tesla's 33% share ($19.5 million and $23.1 million), Tesla's portion of the total came to approximately $243 million. It was the first federal jury verdict arising from a fatal Tesla Autopilot accident.
Tesla had declined a $60 million pre-trial settlement offer and moved after the verdict to have it set aside. On February 20, 2026, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom denied that motion, writing that 'evidence admitted at trial more than supports the jury verdict' and that Tesla had raised no new arguments justifying relief. Tesla has appealed to the Eleventh Circuit (No. 26-10858), where the case is pending; on July 9, 2026 the attorneys general of Florida, Alabama and Georgia filed an amicus brief asking the court to reverse the judgment or cut the punitive award.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Electrek: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgment over Autopilot crash, judge says (Feb 2026)·Archived copy
- 2.Insurance Journal: Judge Upholds $243M Verdict Against Tesla Over Fatal Autopilot Crash (Feb 2026)·Archived copy
- 3.TechCrunch: Tesla loses bid to overturn $243M Autopilot verdict (Feb 2026)·Archived copy
- 4.Associated Press, via Yahoo News: Tesla found partly liable for deadly Autopilot crash (2025)·Archived copy
- 5.CNBC: Tesla asks for $243M verdict to be tossed in fatal Autopilot crash suit (Aug 2025)·Archived copy
- 6.CNBC: Tesla loses bid to toss $243M verdict in fatal Autopilot crash suit (Feb 2026)·Archived copy
- 7.Electrek: Florida AG asks court to erase Tesla's $243M Autopilot crash verdict (July 20, 2026)
More proven verdicts from Singleton Schreiber
All Singleton Schreiber proven verdicts →A San Diego County jury awarded $16,420,725 to Jane Neely after a diseased tree branch broke from a state-maintained oak and fell across State Route 79 near Warner Springs, crushing the 75-year-old motorcyclist beneath it and leaving her permanently paraplegic.
A federal jury awarded $85 million against San Diego County after deputies tased, beat, and hogtied Lucky Phounsy during a 2015 mental health crisis; the county later settled for $12 million after the judge vacated the wrongful-death damages and ordered a new trial on that portion.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.