Speaking of Fraud

Following a certification of a class action lawsuit against Tesla for misleading about, "Full Self Driving," Tesla retroactively and surreptitiously changed the terms of existing contracts.

I'm an engineer, not a lawyer dammit,* but this seems to me to be to be a deliberate attempt at spoliation of evidence, which would mean that the judge could (probably should) instruct the jury that this behavior is an indicator that the party in question was acting from a knowledge of their guilt/responsibility.

Here's hoping that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ gets his flabby white ass handed to him in court.

Tesla has retroactively modified “Full Self-Driving” purchase agreements to add “supervised” language that did not exist when owners originally bought the product. In some cases, the original documents have been made entirely inaccessible.

Electrek has confirmed the issue with multiple owners. The contracts in question were signed between 2016 and early 2024, when Tesla sold the package as “Full Self-Driving Capability” — with no mention of “supervised” and the implicit promise of unsupervised autonomy.

……… 

The critical detail: on both accounts, the only documents that are inaccessible are those that would reference FSD purchase details. Every other document, including purchase agreements for vehicles without FSD, opens without issue.

“It’s crazy because there are zero issues opening any documents on both accounts except those that would have the FSD purchase details documented,” Abcarius said. “Super fishy.”

Electrek has confirmed that other Tesla owners, specifically those with Tesla HW3 vehicles and FSD, have the same issue. The issue specifically affects contracts from the era when Tesla sold FSD without “supervised” language.

………

Making original purchase agreements inaccessible fits a broader pattern.

In August 2024, Tesla deleted a blog post from October 2016 that stated “all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory — including Model 3 — will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.” The post was removed without explanation while lawsuits were building. It is still accessible through the Wayback Machine.

 Now, the original contracts that would show Tesla sold FSD without any “supervised” qualifier are becoming inaccessible — right as Tesla faces up to $14.5 billion in lawsuits spanning FSD false advertising, Autopilot crash liability, and securities fraud.

When will Elon be frog marched out of his offices in handcuffs? 

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Oh, the Poor Babies

The New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has a sad over a bill that would require cops to carry their own liability insurance.

I literally could not give less of a sh$# about their feelings about this.

You have a culture, and a contract, that makes any sort of accountability nearly impossible, so it's time to fight your evil with the evil if the insurance companies.

There are a lot of indicators that can find a likely bad cop, but police departments almost universally refuse to use this data.

Insurance companies will use this data, and jack up the rates for high rise officers.

What's more, they keep track of the cops that bounce from department to department following incidents.

Normally bad cops cost the taxpayer.  Let them pay their own way 

One of many ideas floated as a solution to police misconduct issues is the requirement that officers carry their own insurance. Almost every law enforcement officer is currently indemnified by the towns and cities that employ them, ensuring they’re never personally responsible for any judgments or settlements stemming from their misconduct.

And that’s a very small percentage of civil rights lawsuits. Far more frequently, officers are allowed to walk away from these lawsuits with application of qualified immunity, a Supreme Court-created doctrine that says officers can’t be held accountable if any “reasonable” officer would not have immediately understood their actions violated constitutional rights.

The liability insurance theory goes like this: officers who become uninsurable due to multiple lawsuits will become unemployable. Given that most law enforcement agencies currently do as little as possible to discipline officers who engage in rights violations and misconduct, any nudge of the needle towards the accountability ideal is welcome.

 

Well, It's a Start

The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that police are not covered by qualified immunity under state law, meaning that they can be sued for violating people's rights.

Congress needs to pass legislation to do this nationally:

The short version was that a woman who wanted to visit her boyfriend in prison, and guards forced a strip search on her, and then the Nevada Department of Corrections tried to prevent her lawsuit by claiming qualified immunity.

The court was having none of it:

………

[W]e reject the NDOC parties’ assertion that state tort law provides meaningful redress for invasions of the constitutional right at issue here. Although other courts have determined tort remedies suffice to compensate for personal invasions of certain constitutional rights, […] we disagree that any commonalities between state tort-law claims and constitutional protections… provide meaningful recourse for violations of the constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents, as state tort law ultimately protects and serves different interests than such constitutional guarantees.

………

Absent a damages remedy here, no mechanism exists to deter or prevent violations of important individual rights in situations like that allegedly experienced by Mack. Thus, a damages remedy is warranted under this factor of the Restatement test, as monetary relief remains necessary to enforce the provision for individuals in Mack‘s shoes, and a damages remedy furthers the purpose of the search-and seizure provision to the extent it acts as a deterrent to government illegality.

I know that there are some people out there who think that rulings like this will make it more difficult to recruit police officers, but this is not true.  It will only make it more difficult to recruit bad police officers.