Tesla has settled the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Edgar Monserratt Martinez, an 18-year-old killed in a 2018 crash involving a 2014 Model S whose owner-requested 85 mph (137 kph) speed limiter had been disabled before the fatal high-speed impact, court records show. The automaker was removed as a defendant Sunday, with plaintiff lawyers disclosing in a filing last week that the claim against Tesla had been resolved, according to Reuters (reporting by Mike Scarcella and Abhirup Roy). A court official confirmed Monday that the case settled. Terms were not disclosed.

Jury selection had already begun at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale when Judge David A. Haimes announced the resolution and sent jurors home. Opening arguments were set for Tuesday. The timing matters: Tesla walked away on the eve of a trial that would have put disabled-speed-limiter testimony before a Florida jury less than a year after another Florida jury hit the company with a $243 million Autopilot verdict. Tesla denied wrongdoing and argued the driver’s reckless operation caused the crash “with or without a speed limiter.”

The 2018 Crash and the Speed Limiter Claim

The crash happened May 8, 2018, in Fort Lauderdale. Barrett Riley, 18, lost control of a 2014 Model S at 116 mph on a curve with a 25 mph posted limit, per court records. The sedan slammed into two concrete walls and caught fire. Riley and front-seat passenger Edgar Monserratt Martinez, also 18, were killed. A third teen in the back seat was ejected and survived.

Riley’s parents had asked Tesla to install an aftermarket speed limiter after their son received a 112 mph citation in March 2018. The device capped the Model S at 85 mph. The plaintiff’s theory, now central to the settled claim, is that a Tesla technician at the Dania Beach service center disabled the limiter roughly a month before the crash without the parents’ knowledge. Had the limiter stayed active, the lawsuit argued, the Model S could not have reached 116 mph.

This Is Tesla’s Second Settlement Tied to the Same Fatal Crash

The Monserratt family suit is separate from the earlier case brought by Barrett Riley’s parents. In July 2022, a federal jury in Fort Lauderdale found Tesla 1% negligent for removing the speed limiter, assigning 90% blame to Barrett Riley and 9% to his father. Damages totaled $10.5 million, making Tesla’s share roughly $105,000. That verdict was the first U.S. jury trial involving a Tesla crash.

A Broward circuit court had dismissed a separate Riley-family claim alleging Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries caused the post-crash fire. The Monserratt family revived both theories in a new suit and pressed toward trial until this weekend’s resolution. The settlement covers only the claims against Tesla. The case against the Riley family estate, still a defendant, is a separate track.

Tesla’s Florida Litigation Exposure Keeps Growing

Florida has become the toughest venue for Tesla’s driver-assistance and product-liability defense. In August 2025, a Miami federal jury ordered Tesla to pay $243 million in damages over the 2019 Key Largo Autopilot crash that killed Naibel Benavides Leon. Tesla lost its bid to overturn that verdict in February 2026 when U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom ruled the trial evidence “more than supports” the jury’s findings. Tesla is appealing.

Since the Benavides verdict, Tesla has been quietly resolving pending cases. Reuters reported 2025 settlements in two California Autopilot cases, including the death of a 15-year-old. A 2021 Ohio sudden-acceleration case settled in April 2025. In March 2026, a Cybertruck owner sued Tesla for more than $1 million over a Houston Autopilot crash into a concrete barrier. Tesla is also fighting a class action over Full Self-Driving marketing claims on behalf of buyers from 2016 through 2024.

What a Jury Would Have Heard This Week

Jurors would have weighed whether a Tesla technician disabled an owner-requested safety feature without authorization and whether that, combined with battery pack behavior in a high-speed impact, was a legal cause of a teenage passenger’s death. Curtis Miner, the Rileys’ attorney in the 2022 trial, told that earlier jury Elon Musk personally phoned James Riley after the crash and said the technicians should not have removed the device. Whether that call would have surfaced before a 2026 jury is now moot.

Tesla’s public position has not shifted. The company maintains the driver had a documented history of triple-digit speeding and the Model S was state-of-the-art. Sunday’s dismissal points to a calculation most defense litigators recognize: the risk of a jury award on a sympathetic fact pattern in South Florida, plus precedent exposure, outweighs a confidential payment.

EVXL’s Take

I’ve been covering Tesla litigation since before the first Riley verdict in 2022, and the pattern this month is unmistakable. Tesla rejected a reported $60 million pre-trial offer in the Benavides case and ended up facing a nine-figure verdict. Since then it has settled at least four Autopilot cases and now this one, all on the eve of trial. That is not a company that believes it can win in front of a Florida jury on driver-assistance or service-technician negligence facts.

The speed-limiter claim is in some ways worse than an Autopilot case. Forget debates about whether Full Self-Driving marketing overpromised. This is a direct product-and-service allegation: a customer asked for a safety cap, Tesla installed it, and a Tesla technician allegedly took it off without telling the family. If true, that is the kind of fact a jury needs 20 minutes to punish. Settling was rational. It was also expensive.

My prediction: Tesla will settle at least three more pending wrongful death or serious-injury cases with Florida, California, or Texas connections before December 31, 2026, rather than let them reach verdict. The Benavides ruling changed the math, and Tesla’s lawyers know it.

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.