A widow in the US has taken legal action against Tesla after her husband’s tragic death in a 2020 accident involving a Model 3 vehicle.
Jyung Woo Hahn, aged 46, lost his life on March 12, 2022, in a collision where his Tesla malfunctioned, crashed into a tree, and subsequently caught fire in New York. Despite surviving the initial crash, he was trapped in the burning car.
The plaintiff, Jiyoung Yoon, has filed a lawsuit against Tesla in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit alleges that Tesla’s involvement in designing, producing, distributing, and selling the vehicle in a “defective and unreasonably dangerous condition” led to Hahn’s severe injuries, suffering, and eventual death.
The incident happened as Hahn was driving a Tesla on the Palisades Interstate Parkway in Rockland County, New York. The lawsuit explicitly asserts that the vehicle’s faulty condition directly caused Hahn’s injuries and death.
The legal action seeks judgment against Tesla for various damages, including economic losses, lost wages, parental guidance loss, emotional distress, pain and suffering, and more.
This lawsuit emerges as Tesla’s engineers reportedly admitted in their testimonies that the company, under Elon Musk’s leadership, had not addressed issues with the Autopilot system following a fatal crash in the US in 2016.
This revelation has heightened scrutiny over Tesla’s self-driving technology and has even attracted attention from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is investigating Musk’s claims regarding the capabilities of Tesla’s self-driving features.
