Credit: Tesla

Tesla was victorious in an Autopilot case in California. The judge ruled that the owners must bring their claims through individual arbitration rather than court.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, ruled over the weekend that a group of Tesla owners cannot sue that the company falsely advertised its autonomous driving features. Instead, they will have to face individual arbitration. The decision means Tesla will not have to face class action lawsuits on behalf of much larger groups of vehicle owners.

In Saturday's ruling, the judge said the four Tesla owners who filed the proposed class action last year agreed to arbitrate any legal claims against the company when they accepted its terms and conditions while purchasing vehicles through the Tesla website. A fifth plaintiff who did not sign an arbitration agreement waited too long to sue, Gilliam ruled in dismissing that plaintiffs' claims, Reuters reports.

The company proposed to send the claims to arbitration, citing the plaintiffs' agreement to the arbitration agreement. Gilliam on Saturday rejected the plaintiffs' claims that the agreements signed by the four plaintiffs were unenforceable.

Judge Gilliam also denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, “prohibiting the defendant from continuing to engage in its allegedly illegal and deceptive practices.” In fact, the plaintiffs asked the court to force Tesla to stop marketing their ADAS as providing “full self-driving capability;” to stop selling and de-activate their FSD beta software; and to alert all customers that Tesla’s use of terms like “full self-driving capability,” “self-driving,” and “autonomous” to describe the ADAS technology was inaccurate.

© 2023, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.

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