Looming over two cases threatening Musk’s car company is a single question: Can he be trusted?

By BERNARD CONDON and DAVID FISCHER MIAMI AP Elon Musk fought court cases on opposite coasts Monday raising a question about the billionaire that could either speed his plan to put self-driving Teslas on U S roads or throw up a major roadblock Can this wildly effective man who tends to exaggerate really be trusted Related Articles The risks and rewards of tokenization as crypto heavyweights push for it Less selection higher prices How tariffs are shaping the holiday shopping season Everything is bigger at San Diego Comic-Con this year Except Hollywood How to clean keyboard grunge earwax in earphones and screen smudges Over million pools sold across the U S and Canada are under recall after reports of nine deaths In Miami a Tesla driver who has admitted he was wrong to reach for a dropped cell phone moments before a deadly accident spoke of the danger of putting too much faith in Musk s machinery in this scenario his Autopilot venture I trusted the hardware too much reported George McGee who ran off the road and killed a woman out stargazing with her boyfriend I deduced that if the car saw something in front of it it would provide a warning and apply the brakes In unique coincidence regulators arguing an Oakland California matter tried to pin exaggerated talk about the same Tesla innovation at the center of a request to suspend the carmaker from being able to sell vehicles in the state Musk s tendency to talk big whether its his cars his rockets or his regime costing-cutting efforts have landed him in trouble with investors regulators and courts before but rarely at such a delicate moment After his social media spat with President Donald Trump Musk can no longer count on a light regulatory touch from Washington Meanwhile sales of his electric cars have plunged and so a hit to his safety reputation could threaten his next big project rolling out driverless robotaxis hundreds of thousands of them in several U S cities by the end of next year The Miami event holds other dangers too Lawyers for the family of the dead woman Naibel Benavides Leon in recent weeks convinced the judge overseeing the jury trial to allow them to argue for punitive damages A car crash lawyer not involved in the event but closely following it commented that could cost Tesla tens of millions of dollars or possibly more I ve seen punitive damages go to the hundreds of millions so that is the floor announced Miguel Custodio of Los Angeles-based Custodio Dubey It is also a signal to other plaintiffs that they can also ask for punitive damages and then the payments could start compounding Tesla did not reply for a request for comment That Tesla has allowed the Miami occurrence to proceed to trial is surprising It has settled at least four deadly accidents involving Autopilot including payments just last week to a Florida family of a Tesla driver That stated Tesla was victorious in two other jury cases both in California that also sought to lay blame on its hardware for crashes Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Miami matter argue that Tesla s driver-assistance feature called Autopilot should have warned the driver and braked when his Model S sedan blew through flashing lights a stop sign and a T-intersection at miles-an-hour in an April crash Tesla noted that drivers are warned not to rely on Autopilot or its more advanced Full Self-Driving system It say the fault entirely lies with the distracted driver just like so numerous other accidents since cellphones were invented Driver McGee settled a separate suit brought by the family of Benavides and her severely injured boyfriend Dillon Angulo McGee was clearly shaken when shown a dashcam video Monday of his car jumping a Key West Florida road and hitting a parked Chevrolet Tahoe which then slammed into Benavides and sent her feet through the air to her death Requested if he had seen those images before McGee pinched his lips shook his head then squeaked out a response No Tesla s attorney sought to show that McGee was fully to blame asking if he had ever contacted Tesla for additional instructions about how Autopilot or any other safety features worked McGee noted he had not though he was heavy user of the features He revealed he had driven the same road home from work or times Under questioning he also acknowledged he alone was responsible for watching the road and hitting the brakes But lawyers for the Benavides family had another chance to parry that line of argument and urged McGee if he would have taken his eyes off the road and reached for his phone had he been driving any car other than a Tesla on Autopilot McGee responded I don t believe so The development is expected to continue for two more weeks In the California affair the state s Department of Motor Vehicles is arguing before an administrative judge that Tesla has misled drivers by exaggerating the capabilities of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features A court filing alleges even those feature names are misleading because they offer just partial self-driving Musk has been warned by federal regulators to stop making citizens comments suggesting Full Self-Driving allows his cars to drive themselves because it could lead to overreliance on the system resulting in accomplishable crashes and deaths He also has run into trouble with regulators for Autopilot In the company had to recall million vehicles for problems with the system and is now under analysis for saying it fixed the issue though it s unclear it has according to regulatory documents The California episode is expected to last another four days Condon revealed from New York