In a case stemming from a fiery, fatal crash after an 18-year-old motorist drove 116 mph, a federal appeals court Friday sided with Tesla, Inc. in a dispute about the design of the car's battery system.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district-court decision in the lawsuit filed by the father of Barrett Riley, who lost control of the 2014 Tesla Model S in May 2018 on Florida A1A in Fort Lauderdale. After crashing, the car caught fire, with Riley and a passenger, Edgar Monserratt Martinez, dying.
The lawsuit, in part, centered on a decision in March 2018 by Riley’s parents to have Tesla mechanics activate a speed “limiter” that would have prevented the car from going more than 85 mph, according to Friday’s ruling. But the younger Riley returned to the mechanic a few weeks later and had the limiter removed.
A jury in 2022 found Tesla negligent on that issue and awarded $10.5 million in damages. But under what is known as “comparative fault,” it said Tesla was only 1% responsible — and should pay $105,000.
Meanwhile, a judge also granted summary judgment to Tesla on allegations that the electric car’s battery cell walls were not thick enough to prevent catching fire in a crash and that a pack that held batteries did not include a fire retardant to stop a fire from spreading. Riley died because the car caught fire, not because of the impact of the crash, Friday’s opinion said.
In ruling for Tesla, the lower-court judge excluded an expert witness’ testimony on the battery cell-wall issue and found that the expert’s opinion “was not sufficient to show that Barrett would have survived the fire but for the lack of intumescent (fire protection) material.”
The appeal to the Atlanta-based appeals court focused on the fire issues and whether the Tesla was defectively designed. The appeal did not involve the speed limiter issue.
In upholding the lower-court ruling, for example, the panel said the plaintiffs’ battery expert, Ralph White, did not show that the lack of the fire retardant caused Riley’s death.
“Dr. White testified that the intumescent material could have prevented the fire from spreading to undamaged batteries within the battery pack,” said the opinion, shared by Chief Judge William Pryor and Judges Britt Grant and Robert Luck. “But Barrett died from the fire that started when the batteries in his Tesla were crushed during the high-speed collision. The problem … is that Dr. White never testified that Barrett would have survived the fire that started from the crash even if the intumescent material was in the car. In causation terms, there was insufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that it was ‘more likely than not’ that Barrett would not have died in the fire but for the lack of intumescent material in his Tesla’s battery pack.”
The opinion said that at the time of the accident, Riley was trying to pass a friend’s car and was traveling 116 mph going into a curve.
“This is when he lost control and swerved into the right lane,” the opinion said. “Still traveling at around 90 miles per hour, the Tesla struck and mounted the curb, hit a concrete wall on the passenger side door, ricocheted off another concrete wall, spun around completely, and went back into A1A. Barrett’s Tesla cut across the five traffic lanes, mounted the curb on the other side of the northbound lane, and then hit a metal light pole, splitting the pole in half. After one of the collisions, the Tesla caught fire. By the time it rested, the fire engulfed the front end of the car.”
