A decide has discovered “affordable proof” that Elon Musk and different executives at Tesla knew that the corporate’s self-driving know-how was faulty however nonetheless allowed the automobiles to be pushed in an unsafe method anyway, based on a latest ruling issued in Florida.

Palm Seaside county circuit court docket decide Reid Scott mentioned he’d discovered proof that Tesla “engaged in a advertising technique that painted the merchandise as autonomous” and that Musk’s public statements concerning the know-how “had a major impact on the assumption concerning the capabilities of the merchandise”.

The ruling, reported by Reuters on Wednesday, clears the best way for a lawsuit over a deadly crash in 2019 north of Miami involving a Tesla Mannequin 3. The automobile crashed into an 18-wheeler truck that had turned on to the street into the trail of driver Stephen Banner, shearing off the Tesla’s roof and killing Banner.

The lawsuit, introduced by Banner’s spouse, accuses the corporate of intentional misconduct and gross negligence, which may expose Tesla to punitive damages. The ruling comes after Tesla gained two product legal responsibility lawsuits in California earlier this yr centered on alleged defects in its Autopilot system.

Choose Scott additionally discovered that the plaintiff, Banner’s spouse, ought to be capable to argue to jurors that Tesla’s warnings in its manuals and “clickwrap” had been insufficient. He mentioned the accident is “eerily comparable” to a 2016 deadly crash involving Joshua Brown by which the Autopilot system didn’t detect crossing vehicles.

“It will be affordable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla by means of its CEO and engineers was aware of the issue with the ‘Autopilot’ failing to detect cross visitors,” the decide wrote.

Banner’s lawyer, Lake “Trey” Lytal III, mentioned they’re “extraordinarily pleased with this consequence primarily based within the proof of punitive conduct”.

The decide additionally cited a 2016 video displaying a Tesla automobile driving with out human intervention as a technique to market Autopilot. The start of the video exhibits a disclaimer which says the individual within the driver’s seat is simply there for authorized causes. “The automobile is driving itself,” it mentioned.

Choose Scott mentioned that “absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this know-how doesn’t presently exist out there”, he wrote.

Bryant Walker Smith, a College of South Carolina regulation professor, informed Reuters that the decide’s abstract of the proof was vital as a result of it suggests “alarming inconsistencies” between what Tesla knew internally, and what it was saying in its advertising.

“This opinion opens the door for a public trial by which the decide appears inclined to confess a variety of testimony and different proof that may very well be fairly awkward for Tesla and its CEO,” Smith mentioned. “And now the results of that trial may very well be a verdict with punitive damages.”