Tesla faces new lawsuit over EV door design after fatal Washington state crash

Tesla lawyers have been busy this year, and another lawsuit has been filed against the company in the U.S. District Court of Washington. 

The latest legal episode was linked to an accident involving a couple and a Tesla car that claimed the life of one and left the other in need of serious care. It is the latest addition to the ever-growing body of litigation targeting the company’s electrically powered handles.

Washington couple were involved in Tesla accident

The accident reportedly involved a Tesla Model 3 in January 2023, resulting in a fiery crash that left the car so damaged that rescuers allegedly had a difficult time prying open the vehicle’s doors.

The couple, Jeffery Dennis and his wife, Wendy, had been running errands on that Saturday afternoon in the Model 3 sedan when it “suddenly and rapidly accelerated out of control,” coming to a stop after it ran into a utility pole, after which it burst into flames, according to the suit, which was filed on Friday.

The complaint blames Tesla’s “unique and defective door handle design” for rendering the doors inoperable and impeding the rescue process. This led to Wendy Dennis dying at the scene, and Jeffery Dennis suffering injuries, including burns to his legs.

“Several bystanders ran to the vehicle and attempted to assist Jeff and Wendy Dennis, but the Model 3’s door handles would not operate,” the couple’s lawyers said in the lawsuit. “Several good Samaritans even attempted to use a baseball bat to break the car windows to help the Dennisses out of the burning vehicle.”

The lawsuit accuses Tesla of negligence and misleading customers, claiming that Elon Musk’s company knew the door handles could become inoperable after a crash and was aware of fire hazards from the lithium-ion battery pack, but did nothing to address either issue. 

It also alleges that the Model 3 the couple had been driving had a defect that caused the sudden acceleration out of control, and that the automatic emergency braking system failed.

Tesla’s door design has been targeted in lawsuits 

Tesla vehicles come with two built-in batteries: one for low-voltage power that controls interior functions like windows, doors, and the touchscreen, and the high-voltage pack that propels the car. Should the low-voltage battery die or be disabled, which is possible after a serious crash, the doors may not unlock and must be opened manually from the inside. 

Unfortunately, while Teslas come with manual releases, many owners and passengers reportedly don’t know where they are located or how to operate them. The problem is snowballing into a huge crisis, which has forced the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to start investigating whether some Tesla doors are defective, citing incidents in which exterior handles stopped working and trapped children and other occupants inside. 

Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s design chief, has said the company is working on a redesign of its door handles to make them more intuitive for occupants “in a panic situation.” However, that has not happened yet, and news of Tesla mishaps continues to filter in. 

The issue has even drawn the attention of Bloomberg’s news investigation team, which also reported there have been incidents in which people were seriously injured or died after they were unable to open doors following a loss of power, particularly after crashes.

The latest lawsuit comes weeks after one was filed against Tesla in Wisconsin after a Model S crash killed five occupants who allegedly became trapped in a fast-moving inferno because the doors wouldn’t budge. 

Separately, Tesla was sued in October due to alleged defects in the doors of a crashed Cybertruck in Piedmont, California, that turned it into a “death trap” that prevented three college students from escaping before they died of smoke inhalation.

Then in July, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the sole survivor of a Tesla crash in Murrieta, California, in which three teenagers died.

Despite the mounting cases, authorities have been slow on the uptake as far as the U.S. is concerned; however, in other countries, officials have been moving to remedy the problem. In China, a top regulator is reportedly considering a ban on fully concealed door handles, while in Europe, they have taken incremental measures to improve post-crash rescue and extrication protocols. 

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