ABSTRACT
In August 2025, a Florida jury awarded a twenty-two-year-old female’s estate and another badly injured person two hundred million dollars in punitive damages in a case arising out of a 2019 Tesla crash that occurred when the car was in Autopilot mode. Punitive damages were based on the contention that Tesla’s Autopilot could not be safely deployed outside of controlled-access highways. In 2024, Elon Musk donated one million dollars to a Texas tort reform coalition seeking to downsize awards. As of August 15, 2025, Tesla Chief Executive Officer and billionaire Elon Musk is worth five hundred billion dollars, making him the wealthiest person in the world – a title he has held since May 2024. If Elon Musk were to pay the two hundred million punitive damages, it would be only 1/2500 of his net worth.
A punitive damages award necessary to punish and deter a small or medium company will not send a message of deterrence for a trillion-dollar company like Tesla or Elon Musk. Tesla has a market cap of $1.081 trillion, making it the world’s tenth most valuable company by market cap. A two-hundred-million-dollar punitive damages award imposed against a top company worth $87,494,000,000,000 is the functional equivalent of a parking ticket. My new empirical study of punitive damages in products liability assesses whether the Tesla case reveals an out-of-control jury or a necessary measure to achieve optimal deterrence …
Michael L Rustad, Punitive Damages in Products Liability Revisited (1991-2024), 24 University of New Hampshire Law Review 165 (2025).
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