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Breaking News: Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Tesla re: FSD
- Thread starter 2101Guy
- Start date
Attorneys commonly take half the entire settlement. I did not know this before doing some reading in order to respond to your post. I also ran across the “multiplier”. That is a term that describes the practice of determining fees based on time based charges then multiplying those fees, for example if an attorney has a fee of $600 per hour, using a multiplier of 4, he’d end up charging 4 times as much resulting in him getting $2400 per hour of time spent. That multiplier is for everyone, the lawyers, legal assistants, etc. That comes right out of the settlement amount.
I think one might take issue with your claim that lawyers aren’t depriving class members of a larger settlements. Sucking up half the settlement money, and charging multiples of their normal fees does indeed reduce the amount paid to members of the class.
Excessive fees taken out of the settlement punish the members of the class, not the sued corporation.
You claim we protect ourselves from corporate misdeeds with this process. Well the misdeed is done, Tesla sinned despite the presence of the class action tort system. So we’ve been boned by Tesla, and now I think we’ll get boned by our lawyers.
johnnycnote
Member
If people read the contract, they should understand that there are no promises ref timelines. I they decided to move forward after reading the contract, or (like most prob did) not bothering to read it, well that's on them
Every class action I've seen, I needed to Opt out to not participate. I would automatically be part of the suit by simply doing nothing...
If You read through that most recent court filing that was posted recently on this forum about that most recent FSD
Lawsuit? Tesla argued that exact point in their request to get the judge to dismiss the suit.
Their motion was denied….
FloridaJohn
Member
I expect that to happen eventually regardless of whether there is a class action suit or not. The early adopters will be abandoned for better equipment sooner or later.
johnnycnote
Member
We're discussing the same 84 pg class action filed last Thurs in CA, correct? I haven't seen articles pertaining to Tesla's legal team's request to dismiss this specific case...
Not even $114.97 more like $1.14. Class Actions suits are only beneficial to the lawyers.
Nope. This case:
As well as the FSD case before that one…that Tesla settled for several MILLION dollars.
Teslas motions to dismiss revolved around their argument that the fine print when you buy FSD is the only thing that counted. Not Elons tweets or public statements and not the doctored FSD video on their website.
The judges begged to differ and motions to dismiss were DENIED
johnnycnote
Member
Sheikh vs Tesla, class action suit for failure to deliver features of Enhanced Autopilot as promised by Tesla by end of 2016
So people spent $5000 each on Autopilot, they got roughly $200 back. Lawyers billed $407,000 for their time.It was multiplied by 2.36, so the attorneys got paid over twice what they’d normally bill, or $961,000. The 4 people bringing this suit got approximately the cost of their autopilot returned to them. It cost Tesla $5.4 million for the settlement. There were 32,410 people in the class. It’s stated they paid $5000 each. So Tesla took in $162 million, and paid out $5.4 million. So Tesla doesn’t deliver but keeps 97% of the money they took in.
$200 is 4% of $5000. So the people that spent $5000 each got ~4% of their money back, Tesla keeps $156 million. The attorneys got 2.36 times their usual billed rate.
So this is the great tort system that “collectively protects” the 32,410 people wronged by Tesla.
The lawyers got much more than double their usual rate for doing this. Whoopee, payday for them.
4% eh?
My sales tax is 8%.
So the amount actually returned to the 32,410 members of the class that fronted Tesla $162 million dollars amounted to a fraction of just the sales tax they paid on the amount of that FSD purchase.
And so dcesq06, that’s why I’m down on class action lawsuits.
As to your claim “And the lawyers are the means by which we (the purchasers, customers, etc) can collectively protect ourselves from being taken advantage of..” Well, it didn’t quite work out that way for these 32,410 people, did it?
Are you an attorney? I’m guessing that because of the “esq” in your user name. That and the fairy tale.
So people spent $5000 each on Autopilot, they got roughly $200 back. Lawyers billed $407,000 for their time.It was multiplied by 2.36, so the attorneys got paid over twice what they’d normally bill, or $961,000. The 4 people bringing this suit got approximately the cost of their autopilot returned to them. It cost Tesla $5.4 million for the settlement. There were 32,410 people in the class. It’s stated they paid $5000 each. So Tesla took in $162 million, and paid out $5.4 million. So Tesla doesn’t deliver but keeps 97% of the money they took in.
$200 is 4% of $5000. So the people that spent $5000 each got ~4% of their money back, Tesla keeps $156 million. The attorneys got 2.36 times their usual billed rate.
So this is the great tort system that “collectively protects” the 32,410 people wronged by Tesla.
The lawyers got much more than double their usual rate for doing this. Whoopee, payday for them.
4% eh?
My sales tax is 8%.
So the amount actually returned to the 32,410 members of the class that fronted Tesla $162 million dollars amounted to a fraction of just the sales tax they paid on the amount of that FSD purchase.
And so dcesq06, that’s why I’m down on class action lawsuits.
As to your claim “And the lawyers are the means by which we (the purchasers, customers, etc) can collectively protect ourselves from being taken advantage of..” Well, it didn’t quite work out that way for these 32,410 people, did it?
Are you an attorney? I’m guessing that because of the “esq” in your user name. That and the fairy tale.
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agreed. All car companies have risk mgmt, actuaries, etc. They calculate it all....lawsuits are cost of doing business. They calculate how much the lies will cost them vs how much the lies will rake in. If the latter exceeds the former? Makes business sense in some cases to false advertise, deceive, etc.
johnnycnote
Member
That Sheikh vs Tesla class action for Autopilot is a very different and much smaller beast if I’m interpreting these documents correctly. Tesla sold people these features starting in October 2016 and said they would be deployed by the end of the year but they actually started deploying in January and fully delivered by September of 2017. The people here got a cheque because the features were fully delivered months late even if they didn’t know the lawsuit was happening, sounds like a not terrible deal to me.
This is going to be massively more complex considering the timeframe and wide range of things that will be brought up, from early adopters being outright sold robotaxis that haven’t materialized to commitments for delivery of even just Autosteer on City Streets.
And we have the fact that some (many?) people today still believe they’re buying Robotaxi functionality even though they’re being sold a system that will remain Level 2 for the foreseeable future. Right now Elon talks/tweets like he assumes everyone knows FSD will remain “supervised autonomy” and not like people think he’s saying Robotaxis will be here within three months.
This is going to be massively more complex considering the timeframe and wide range of things that will be brought up, from early adopters being outright sold robotaxis that haven’t materialized to commitments for delivery of even just Autosteer on City Streets.
And we have the fact that some (many?) people today still believe they’re buying Robotaxi functionality even though they’re being sold a system that will remain Level 2 for the foreseeable future. Right now Elon talks/tweets like he assumes everyone knows FSD will remain “supervised autonomy” and not like people think he’s saying Robotaxis will be here within three months.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the system itself that lends itself to the low payout for class members.
The problem is that the attorneys and the represented litigants are the ones settling the case, but they are also settling for the class, who have no say. The attorneys and the represented litigants do not get the same amount of money as the class, they’ll get much more. It’s in their best interest to settle.
So it’s more about the system itself than it is about the amount of damage suffered by the class. The people in the class will generally get pennies on the dollar.
I’ve been a class member in a number of class action suits, mostly in common stocks where there was wrongdoing that hurt the people who owned the stocks. Invariably the class payouts were extremely low.
Time will tell. It won’t matter much what is said here, we’ll just wait and see what happens. Meanwhile, my Tesla is still an awesome car so what ever happens with this suit, I’m happy. I’ll still opt out because I have a jaundiced view of the whole class action process, and honestly I don’t really feel I’ve been wronged here. I’m still annoyed with the broken promises.
But even if FSD were released tomorrow, I’m not going to fully trust it. In the last 5 years I‘ve yet to see a Tesla software release that wasn’t a beta. When the FSD software does arrive it too will be in a chronic beta. The dream of crawling into my car and it autonomously fully self driving me home won‘t be achieved during what’s left of my life time. A class action lawsuit isn’t going to change that.
Common shareholders are at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of any financial compensation from a company, feels like consumers might get a bit more. In that video above, the dude received $200 for a $5k purchase of features that were merely delivered 1-9 months late.
The strongest argument in this lawsuit will be from people who bought FSD in 2016 on assertions that really haven't been delivered on at all, they were actually sold full-on Robotaxis that are surely still years away. Some people have paid for FSD multiple times across vehicles across years, I recall one on here who had spent something crazy like $58k on FSD across their vehicles -- the sheer size of some numbers might mean a significant payout could be coming.
I imagine a chunk of this will be about perception regardless of what fine print exists on the website etc, and I expect Elon/Tesla will argue that FSD has never been tied to SAE Levels and people who bought in recent years shouldn't have expected Level 4/5 Robotaxis (early adopters are a different story). The plaintiffs will argue the naming alone is deceptive, that "Full Self-driving" itself suggests a certain level of autonomy that is incongruent with "supervised autonomy".
Not sure what % people could expect to get back, but this will be a very different beast and could be particularly nasty if the plaintiffs successfully argue that nothing has been delivered considering the way the system is named and the perception around it. This wouldn't be some features that are fully delivered 1-9 months late, this would be Fully Self-driving features that haven't been delivered at all going back six years.
johnnycnote
Member
For the record, I did not purchase FSD. $12K didn't seem worth it, but I am paying the monthly $200 to see how it works. It's not bad and it def makes my longer highway trips very pleasant. However, my M3 received the FSD Beta update yesterday and while my first drive around the neighborhood was great, today's trips left a lot to be desired. It's good in well defined rural and residential type roads, but driving around big cities like Newark NJ or NYC is not for the faint hearted
Isn’t it mainly free AP features that “make your longer highway trips pleasant”?
For me it is. I get in the middle interstate lane, enable AP, and arrive at my destination much less fatigued than without AP. And no, rarely do I need to lane change from that middle lane.
johnnycnote
Member
True. My main reason for FSD was to try to get to Beta, which just happened yesterday. Just did a 500 mile roundtrip and I got used to and I'm kind of digging the lane change and auto exit features
It is common knowledge in the forums and the media that Elon is often overly optimistic about his companies capabilities. I believe that in his heart he fully believes that his goals are attainable with enough time, talent and hard work, they can be realized.
He has personally be successful far beyond the average person and has achieved incredible accomplishment. His enthusiasm for possibilities drives him and is would not be impossible for some of those goals to not be obtained in the timelines he predicts.
Not sure if the courts will take this into consideration with multiple class action suits, but these days that is just the price to be paid for trying to accomplish great things with great enthusiasm.
Perhaps expecting Elon to accomplish everything he says he will do is naive.
He has personally be successful far beyond the average person and has achieved incredible accomplishment. His enthusiasm for possibilities drives him and is would not be impossible for some of those goals to not be obtained in the timelines he predicts.
Not sure if the courts will take this into consideration with multiple class action suits, but these days that is just the price to be paid for trying to accomplish great things with great enthusiasm.
Perhaps expecting Elon to accomplish everything he says he will do is naive.
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