Oracle Exec Sues Tesla Over Full Self Driving Promises And Wins $10,600

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Class action lawsuits against Tesla have been running for a while based on the claims and promises Elon Musk made about Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD). Basically, people who spent a lot of money expecting Full Self Driving to work within a reasonable period of time are arguing that they got ripped off and conned. (I paid $6,000 for FSD almost 7 years ago in August 2019, for example, while some people paid up to $15,000 for FSD at its peak price.) There are class action lawsuits on this and other topics in the US and in Australia. I don’t think there are any in Europe (yet).

In that Australia one, the judge just recently issued a stern warning to Tesla because he feels like Tesla is dragging its feet in the case.

However, not everyone is going the class action route and waiting on these cases. A director of software engineering at Oracle who feels he got duped recently filed a Texas small claims court claim against Tesla. Ben Gawiser argued that he should have received unsupervised Full Self Driving by now. Tesla didn’t show up to court, so Gawiser got $10,600 in a default judgment as well as $72.88 in court costs. The Texan company was notified, but lawyers representing Tesla claimed they weren’t aware of the hearing or the default judgement and filed a motion asking to extend the appeal deadline. The judge wasn’t buying it and denied the motion. So, yes, Tesla owes Gawiser $10,672.88.

Does this set any precedence for the bigger Class Action cases on this matter? I have no idea. My instinct would say no.

Gawiser also complained about the lack of communication from Tesla. “I literally had zero communication from them, pretty much since I bought the car. It has been complete radio silence,” said Gawiser.