Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Yet Another Fatal “Autopilot” Crash

Post author:Alex Lemann
Post published:June 23, 2026
Post category:Computer Law Tort Law

The latest fatal crash involving Tesla’s level 2 automation system is particularly chilling. The victim, Martha Avila, was standing inside her house on a quiet back street when a Tesla Model 3, reportedly with “an automated driving assistance system” engaged, ran off the road and into the two-story brick home, killing her. Local police and the NHTSA have opened investigations.

The driver, Michael Butler, was not intoxicated. Doorbell camera footage shows the car running off the road so fast as to be barely visible. Tesla has not responded to requests for comment from the media, but its vice president of AI and software, Ashok Elluswamy, posted on X that the car was going 73 miles per hour and that the driver “manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.”

One of my scholarly projects for the summer is an article about the first fatal autonomous driving case to result in a jury trial, Benavides v. Tesla. That crash, which I blogged about last summer, killed a young woman and severely injured her boyfriend, resulting in a verdict holding Tesla 33% responsible and imposing $42 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages.

There are some striking similarities between the two incidents. In both cases, the driver had his foot on the accelerator, causing the car to travel far in excess of the speed limit. Both incidents occurred on surface streets. The Benavides crash, which occurred in 2019, involved an older level 2 system that Tesla controversially called “Autopilot.” (Following the jury verdict, Tesla settled a series of other pending cases and retired the name.) Autopilot was not supposed to be used on surface streets, and one of the plaintiff’s theories of defect was that, given the number of fatal crashes that had already occurred, it shouldn’t have been possible for users to activate Autopilot in an area it wasn’t designed for. Today, Tesla’s level 2 system is known as “Full Self Driving (Supervised),” a name that is arguably less sensationally inappropriate given its capabilities. “FSD,” as it is commonly known, now has a much broader operational design domain, and can be used on all kind of roads, including the quiet residential street on which Martha Avila lived.

The Skinny-Label Case: A Unanimous Supreme Court Sides with the Generic

Post author:Karen Sandrik
Post published:June 4, 2026
Post category:Civil Procedure Health Care Intellectual Property Law U.S. Supreme Court

Just this morning, the Supreme Court issued its slip opinion on Hikma v. Amarin, the most recent “skinny-label” case, and it did so unanimously. Justice Jackson, writing for all nine, reversed the Federal Circuit and held that Amarin’s lawsuit against the generic manufacturer Hikma cannot survive a motion to dismiss. I had planned to spread this story across a short series (with the first one going live today — the life of an academic!), yet the Court’s timing collapsed it into one post. So let me take it from the top: how the generic-drug bargain works, how a fish-oil pill turned into a Supreme Court case, what the Justices made of it, and why this quiet dispute is one of the more consequential drug-pricing rulings in years.

What Restorative Justice Teaches Us in an Age of Artificial Intelligence

Post author:Mary Triggiano
Post published:June 3, 2026
Post category:Andrew Center Legal Education Legal Profession Restorative Justice

This is the last in a series of three blog posts, at the end of the academic year, by the director of the Law School’s Andrew Center for Restorative Justice.

In many ways, restorative justice is the opposite of a shortcut.

It asks law students to slow down, sit with discomfort, listen to one another, and resist the urge to immediately judge or fix. It requires presence. It requires vulnerability. And, perhaps most importantly, it requires humanity. In a time when technology, including artificial intelligence in particular, is reshaping how students learn and process information, restorative justice has become one of the most profound human experiences in my classroom at Marquette Law School, through the work of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice.

Like many educators, I have watched students turn to technology for answers, for summaries, for efficiency. And I understand the appeal. The law is complex. The reading is dense. The days are long. But restorative justice has taught me that much important learning in a law school classroom is not found in the quickest answer, the perfect outline, or a polished response generated in seconds. It is found in the pause before speaking. In the courage to share a personal story. In the humility to listen.