The day after he won an unprecedented $243 million verdict in a wrongful death case against Tesla, attorney Brett Schreiber posted a reel on Instagram celebrating the victory. His song pick: 1992’s “Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta” by the Geto Boys.
“This is a verdict that will change the world,” Schreiber wrote in the caption, as Bushwick Bill, Willie D, and Scarface rap in the background about how “everything’s cool in the mind of a gangsta.”
If that sounds like hyperbole, mixed with a dose of macho boasting, you’re not wrong. But in some sense, Schreiber earned his right to strut.
The day before posting the reel, he stood in a Florida courtroom alongside his clients as a jury handed Tesla a major defeat. The company was partially responsible — 33 percent, to be exact — for a 2019 crash that killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides and seriously injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. (It was determined that the driver of the Tesla Model S invovled, George McGee, was mostly responsible. McGee settled with the families in 2021.) The company was ordered to pay as much as $243 million in punitive and compensatory damages to Angulo and Benavides’ family. It’s a huge sum, though one that could be reduced on appeal.
The verdict was highly unusual, insofar as the case even went to trial. Tesla has studiously avoided facing juries in fatality cases involving its driver assist technology, preferring to settle with the injured parties. But when it has gone to trial, it typically wins, such as in two previous cases in California.
The winning streak came to an end with Schreiber’s case. We spoke a few days after the decision about his historic win, how he used Elon Musk’s own words to bolster his case, and how Tesla could face even steeper fines in the many lawsuits that are still pending.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
I’ve been following Tesla for a very long time and I know that the company has a pretty solid track record of avoiding these types of judgments. Why do you think this was different?
Well, I mean, they did make an overture to settle the case, and for a very large sum of money. Now, it was a fraction of the verdict, but the condition of the settlement was that it would be secret. And my clients were not interested in a secret settlement. They knew that this was a case and a cause that was bigger than themselves. And it was important to them that we shine a light on what Tesla has done.
My theme in my closing argument was about Tesla’s choices and Tesla’s words. And to your point as to why they’ve been successful, I think it’s in part because there are two Teslas. There’s Tesla in the showroom and then there’s Tesla in the courtroom. And Tesla in the showroom tells you that they’ve invented the greatest full self-driving car the world has ever seen. Mr. Musk has been peddling to consumers and investors for more than a decade that the cars are fully self-driving, that the hardware is capable of full autonomy. And those statements were as untrue the day he said them as they remain untrue today. But then they showed up in a courtroom and they say, No, no, no, this is nothing but a driver assistance feature.
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