...Tesla certainly is singing a different tune than they do in their sales pitches and demo videos...
1) Disclosures:
There's a difference in marketing talk and legal one.
Sales talk tend to emphasize the positives and once a customer bought it, the negatives are disclosed in a document somewhere.
In a simple lawsuit, as long as the disclosures were given to a customer, it's a straight forward case: A signature or consent has a very serious weight in the legal system no matter whether there's a claim or not for the convenience of skipping reading what was signed for.
For example, some lost their homes in the last financial crisis. They claimed they were tricked into signing what they didn't read but they still lost their homes!
Tesla has plenty of disclosures in an owner manual, when Autopilot is enabled from the display screen (once until it's disabled and enabled again), and when Autopilot is enabled by a physical stalk (each time).
The jurors will decide whether the disclosure was sufficient or should it be like an advertisement for peanut butter that would have graphic deadly peanut allergic reactions 95% of the whole clip and the rest of 5% of the clip would say it tastes good?
2) Liabilities:
I think Tesla is confident that it is legally cleared as NHTSA found that Tesla was not at fault for the Florida Autopilot fatal accident.
However, remember that NTSB also found that "...the system gave far too much leeway to the driver to divert his attention to something other than driving, the result was a collision that, frankly,
should have never happened."
Thus, in juror selection process, Tesla should to pick ones who are more sympathetic to the legal/bureaucratic system like:
"The software and hardware performed within specs and as designed."
and not someone like NTSB who is sympathetic to more rigid, restrictive system to make sure no drivers can ever be inattentive while driving which Tesla's design is currently lacking.
