Tesla will go to court next week over the role its Autopilot system played in a fatal crash in 2018, and wants Apple to testify in its defense.
Tesla wants to prove that Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang was playing a video game on his phone at the time his Model View, California, in 2018. And now, Huang's family, who is suing Tesla for wrongful death, claims that Tesla is secretly working with Apple to help in their defense.
In a pretrial motion filed this week, attorneys representing Huang's family accused Apple of “engaging in secret discovery to assist Tesla in its defense of the pending case.”
Huang's family accused Apple of “engaging in a secret discovery to help support Tesla”
In its initial investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board found that a video game – “a world-building strategy game with multiplayer capability” – was the primary app on Huang's phone at the time of the accident. But investigators could not determine whether he was actively playing when his Model x crashed into the concrete divider.
“The registration data is not specific enough to determine whether the driver of the Tesla was holding the phone at the time of the accident,” the NTSB said in its report.
However, historical logs from Huang's phone found “a pattern of active gaming” during the morning commute hours in the days before the accident and data transmission “consistent with online gaming activity” in the minutes. prior to the accident. Huang's family claims he let games run passively on his phone to collect data.
Lawyers for the Huang family now say that Tesla, with Apple's help, is trying to reverse this at the last minute by filing a statement from an Apple engineer, James Harding, who claims the company determined that Huang was actively playing the game. at the time of the accident. Harding has worked at Apple for 18 years as a manager of “system debugging tools and services.” according to his LinkedIn.
Historical records from Huang's phone found 'active gaming pattern'
By presenting Harding's testimony as a deposition rather than a deposition, Tesla and Apple are trying to “circumvent the discovery process,” attorneys representing Huang's family contend. They also criticize the companies for filing Harding's deposition five months after discovery closed, denying them the opportunity to question the Apple chief before trial. Tesla plans to call Harding as a witness.
Lawyers for the Huang family have subpoenaed Apple seeking more information about Harding's statement. Last month, Apple filed a motion to quash the subpoena, arguing that Huang's lawyers were seeking “a substantial volume of privileged material from Apple.”
“Apple is not a party to this case, has never appeared, and has not received any notice of order related to the dispute,” the company's lawyers argue in their request to quash the subpoena. “While Apple is willing to work in good faith with the parties and fulfill its obligations as a non-party witness, it is unclear about its current obligations and seeks guidance from the Court.” (An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
“Apple is not a party in this case”
The trial is an important test for Tesla's ongoing legal efforts to attribute accidents involving Autopilot to driver inattention. Tesla's strategy has been successful in previous lawsuits where it has avoided culpability in at least two wrongful death lawsuits.
The Huang case is emerging as crucial evidence for this defense. Tesla insists that Autopilot is safe and only fails when drivers are distracted. But the Huang family's legal team plans to cite cases in which Tesla's own executives and engineers have admitted to checking their emails while using Autopilot. Previously, Tesla has argued that some of these statements, including those from Elon Musk himself, should not be admissible because they could be deepfakes.
