The New York Post reports that Elon Musk’s Tesla is facing yet another lawsuit over a deadly post-crash fire, this time filed by Jeffery Dennis, a resident of Washington state. The federal complaint, submitted on Friday, alleges that Dennis’s 2018 Tesla Model 3 experienced a sudden acceleration, surging out of control for approximately five seconds before crashing into a utility pole in Tacoma on January 7, 2023. The impact triggered an intense fire that engulfed the cabin and burned for hours, causing the death of Wendy Dennis at the scene and leaving Jeffery Dennis with catastrophic burns.
According to the lawsuit, the couple had no chance to escape the burning vehicle because the sedan’s electronic door handles became inoperable the moment the car lost power. Breitbart News previously reported that Tesla is considering a door handle redesign after reports of crash victims and children becoming trapped in cars when the battery dies. While Tesla EVs contain a manual door release, it is not obvious, especially in crisis situations.
Witnesses at the scene attempted to help but were driven back by the increasingly intense flames. The complaint states that the fire exposed the vehicle’s high-voltage battery pack, which contains thousands of highly explosive batteries, resulting in a hard-to-extinguish blaze that blocked access to both occupants. The phenomena of EV batteries igniting is called “thermal runaway,” the cause of most dangerous EV fires.
Breitbart News recently reported on another lawsuit related inoperable door handles during a fire that killed five vehicle occupants in Wisconsin:
In a tragic incident that occurred in November last year, a Tesla Model S slammed into a tree and burst into flames, resulting in the deaths of all five passengers. Now, the children of two of the victims, Jeffrey Bauer, 54, and Michelle Bauer, 55, have filed a lawsuit against Tesla in Wisconsin state court, alleging that the car’s door design prevented their parents from escaping the burning vehicle.
According to the complaint, the Bauers survived the initial impact but were unable to escape the fire because the doors locked them inside. A nearby homeowner who called 911 reported hearing screams coming from inside the vehicle, while the local sheriff’s office found a cluster of bodies in the front seat, suggesting they may have been struggling to get out.
The lawsuit argues that Tesla’s design choices created a highly foreseeable risk, where occupants who survived a crash could remain trapped inside a burning vehicle. Although the doors can be manually opened from the inside, many owners and passengers are unaware of the location of the manual door release, especially in a crisis situation.
A lawsuit over the tragic death of three young people in a Cybertruck crash makes similar claims about Tesla door handles: