Benavides v. Tesla, Inc, 1:21-cv-21940

Plaintiffs are the estate of Naibel Benavides Leon and Dillon Angulo, who were struck in 2019 by a Tesla Model S operating with Autopilot engaged, resulting in Benavides Leon’s death and serious injuries to Angulo.
Plaintiffs sued Tesla in Florida state court, alleging strict liability (defective design), failure to warn, defective manufacture, and negligent misrepresentation; the case was removed to federal court and consolidated with a similar action.
The court has already granted summary judgment to Tesla on the defective manufacture and negligent misrepresentation claims but allowed strict liability (design defect) and failure to warn claims to proceed to trial.
Plaintiffs sought to introduce evidence of prior similar Tesla accidents as part of their case; Tesla moved to exclude all such evidence, arguing lack of substantial similarity.
The court requested detailed information regarding the prior accidents for the purpose of determining admissibility and has now issued a ruling on which accidents may be discussed at trial.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of evidence of other Tesla accidents	Prior accidents are substantially similar & show Autopilot defects and Tesla’s notice	Other accidents are not substantially similar and irrelevant	Only three named accidents are admissible; others are excluded
Level of similarity required for prior incidents evidence	Substantial similarity does not require identical facts; evidence goes to notice/design flaw	Dissimilarities (driver actions, crash details) preclude relevance	Differences go to weight, not admissibility; three crashes allowed if relevant to design/notice issues
Use of government investigation records (NTSB/NHTSA)	NHTSA reports and factual NTSB accident reports are admissible	NTSB Board/Recommendation reports are inadmissible	Only NTSB factual accident reports/NHTSA reports allowed; NTSB Board/Recommendation reports excluded
Introduction of broad collections of other accidents	Broad collections (229 incidents) are substantially similar due to failure of Autopilot to avoid crashes	No sufficient detail to assess similarity; inadmissible	Plaintiffs lacked sufficient detail on broad collections; evidence excluded

Jones v. Otis Elevator Co., 861 F.2d 655 (11th Cir. 1988) (sets special conditions for admissibility of other accidents as evidence of design defect)
Heath v. Suzuki Motor Corp., 126 F.3d 1391 (11th Cir. 1997) (explains strong potential for prejudice from evidence of other accidents)
Sorrels v. NCL (Bahamas) Ltd., 796 F.3d 1275 (11th Cir. 2015) (clarifies that substantial similarity does not require identical circumstances)
Crawford v. ITW Food Equip. Grp., LLC, 977 F.3d 1331 (11th Cir. 2020) (sets out three-part test for admissibility of prior incidents)
United States v. Grant, 256 F.3d 1146 (11th Cir. 2001) (discusses balancing of probative value against prejudicial effect under Rule 403)