Tesla's Autonomous Driving Liability

come to an estate planning seminar. If you're interested in getting an estate plan set up, which includes either getting a will a trust, a power of attorney, Marisa, I was really interested in prosecutions that are occurring in Germany, Germany is appears to me to be taking the lead on prosecution of war criminals coming out of Syria. As you know, 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of Syrian refugees went

into Europe and a lot of them ended up in Germany. The Germans are using a theory called universal jurisdiction to prosecute these individuals for war crimes. Last month, there were news reports about a intelligence officer in the Syrian army that was prosecuted and has been sentenced to life in prison. He was involved in more than 5000 persons deaths in

Syrian prisons, prior to his him fleeing Syria for Germany. And recently, there's published reports of a Syrian physician, a doctor, if you can believe it, who was involved in the torture of Syrians that were in custody during the Civil War. When was the Civil War? Well, is still going on as far as I know, it started when we pulled out of Iraq, so I think I think it's been going on for about 10 years now. It's our Bashar is the president of Syria, and he has tortured and use chemical

weapons on his population. Why would you do that? I don't think he wants to give up power, and the Russians have been supporting his regime. But what's interesting to me is that European countries France, for example, in Germany are prosecuting these individuals that were involved in suppression and torture of Syrians in Europe, and they're using a theory called universal jurisdiction. Have you ever

heard of it? I have not. What universal jurisdiction is this idea that a national court can prosecute individuals for serious crimes against international laws, such as crimes against humanity or war crimes or genocide or torture? Now, the United States hasn't universal jurisdiction. And in fact, it appears that the United States criminal code would not allow for use of such a theory because of the way it's structured. In the United States. What has been used as

the Alien Tort Statute? Well, this is a it's been around a long time. And what it does is it allows for non residents, non US resident aliens to come in who are in the United States, if they've been injured outside of the country, by a non US citizen, they can bring a an action here in the United States, where the United States has used the statute for prosecution of foreign persons who have engaged in these kinds

of acts. That statute requires the defendant to be in the United States that they've acted under color of law of their country, even corporations can be prosecuted under this statute. And it's been used to prosecute people for torture, extrajudicial killings, and things like that here in the United States. I just think it's really interesting that countries are European countries are using this prosecute war crimes and and are currently being very active in that issue.

Have you seen anything recently that's been of interest to you? I have the lawsuits and settlements regarding the sexual assault of students. You know, University of Michigan has just entered into a $490 million settlement involving a doctor, and this doctor had been employed by the University of Michigan for over 30 years. He died recently though, well, in 2008, right. Yeah. What was his name?

Well, his name was Robert Anderson, and he was a physician and he really dealt with a lot of athletes at the University of Michigan. So he was like a Larry Nasser, kind of like a Larry Nasser, you know, settled that lawsuit against the Olympics for like 300 and something like 380 million. Yeah, it was a ton of money. And you know, he was allowed and had access to students for 2030 years. Apparently he was also involved. NASA was involved in the Olympics. Isn't he the guy that abused the gymnast?

Yes. And there was a local attorney. She was local. She moved away to Texas. But she was a plaintiff in that lawsuit. She was in, in the Olympics, a gymnast. And she announced the settlement and that she was a defendant. So it was it's not confidential. Well, I gotta tell you, it's kind of shocking. One of the things that seems to stand out to me, or the does stand out to me about all these cases is people within universities were aware this was going on in the Nasser case. The other case was

the Sandusky case at Penn State is sick. And so you have these administrators or other people within the university that are well aware of what's going on and they don't report it and they allow it to continue on. You know, the northeast part of the reason why it settled for so much money,

right? Well, that in the number of victims, this guy Anderson, it's reported that there was over 1000 individuals who accused Dr. Anderson of sexual abuse at the University of Michigan, if you can believe you would think that that's one institution that would be very progressive and its policies and reporting. Even the coach of the shum bachler, who was the coach of the football team, his son was sexually assaulted by Dr.

Anderson when he was a student. When you talk about the other settlements, 2013, Penn State paid nearly 60 million for the couple dozen victims of Jerry Sandusky, Michigan State paid $500 million in 202,018, the victims of Dr. Nasser the statutes changed on reporting sexual abuse and being able to sue or bring charges against somebody criminally well, they

have all over the country. For example, Nevada, and this has been some time ago in 1990, the Supreme Court said there was no statute of limitations on child sexual assault claims, if the assault occurred when the individual was a minor. Criminal. No, that's a civil case. And here in Nevada, the statutes have been the criminal statutes for sexual assault have

been changed. So there's a 20 year statute of limitations on adults, if you are sexually assaulted, and you report the sexual assault to the police, that the statute of limitations is told the individual can be prosecuted at any time. And if the sexual assault involves a minor, or, or a sex trafficking of a minor, the statute of limitations is age 36 of the victim. Now sexual assault is a pretty broad term. That doesn't just mean rate, right? Station molestation, improper touching of a person.

So just means has to be a contact me. That's right. A sexual contact with a with an individual. Okay. And but if it was something that didn't involve a contact, that would not be sexual? Well, no, it in those kinds of cases where you have like a hostile work environment or somebody who is spouses themselves? Well, exposure is a little bit different than exposure, I think may fall under, it's not a sexual

assault, it's lewdness. And depending on what the consequences of lewd act are, I think they're more serious consequences to that than simply exposing yourself. It's it can be a very serious crime. Interestingly enough, the University of North Carolina School of Arts which has been around since the 60s, is a premier school for arts

including dance and paint and things like that. They have just been named a defendant, as a result of it looks to me like mostly dancers that were involved in this for sexual abuse of students. And this goes back for many years. In this lawsuit, it talks about another 29 defendants, eight of whom were recruited are accused of actually sexually abusing

students. And then 19 former administrators who are named defendants who allowed this cultural exploitation to exist, and that case, didn't they just settled the Boy Scouts lawsuit and they're still looking for victims Boy Scout lawsuit? I think they've set up a fund for victims. It's just amazing to me that individuals who the sexual predators are allowed to be in an environment where people don't report MTech sounds like people do report and then it's being ignored.

Well, that sure seems to be the situation, these university cases. Yeah. And you've, you've done quite an number of cases where you've represented victims of sexual abuse and assault, right? I have, and what types of what types of evidence is is used to prove those kinds of cases? It just like a he said, she said, or you have to have like emails or will often you either it's a combination of evidence, you can have physical evidence where you have a violent sexual assault on

an individual. And, in fact, the hospitals are set up in Metro setup, or local police department to take victims who report and do a physical examination. Most hospitals have certified nurses who do sexual assault. But isn't there like a backlog on processing those four genetic material? There is a delay, but the physical examination there is not the nurses available, she has the

equipment necessary to do the examination and photograph. They also do diagrams of the so what if somebody sexually assaulted and they don't know, the perpetrator? Would they still be able to sue somebody, there's two things that a victim of sexual assault should do. First thing is they need to report it to the police, they need to go to the hospital and have a sexual assault done. If

they were raped, or if there was physical penetration. The second thing is they should contact a lawyer because you have criminal prosecutions which are handled through the police department. And then you have civil claim related to the sexual assault the civil claims, usually our claims against the individual and against the facility in which the sexual assault occurred. So like if it was, like a school or like a place as opposed to

somebody's house, like, correct. Okay. So if they needed to talk to a lawyer, they could talk to you about this, the listeners, right? Sure. And it's interesting. What we really look at is, particularly in public events, in hotels and casinos or in shopping, like Yeah, like in there leaving the grocery store late at night?

That's exactly right. It's whether or not there was adequate security, what the security situation was, what noticed that the owner have with regards to crimes against persons, if it's out of venue, then there needs to be adequate security. And if there's not, then there could be criminal liability and civil where they could sue, right? That's right. Exactly. Right. Okay. And if somebody wanted to talk to you about that, they could go to the website, contact the office, and

it's 702-258-3034. That's where we're at less stovall.com. Unfortunately, that happens. Oftentimes, victims of sexual assault really don't know what to do. And, again, victims should report immediately to the police and have an examination

done. And secondly, I really recommend that a person who has been a victim contact a civil lawyer to determine the personal injury lawyer, not just several personal injury lawyer who can give them advice with regards to how they can recover for their damages, civilly, let's recover money to help them out. I was also interested recently in self autonomous vehicles, self driving vehicles, right? That's

right, self driving vehicles. And there was a newspaper, excuse me a news article about a engineer, Dan O'Dowd, I think is his name. And he runs the Green Hill software company. And they supply software for a lot of applications, like aeroplanes, and space craft and things like that. Military applications. And he was very, he came out on it with an ad criticizing Tesla in particular. And he was saying that self driving vehicles, the software that they're using, is really a Microsoft based

software that's just been changed to us and vehicles. So self driving, can they not stop at a red light? Well, they're supposed to, they're supposed to, doesn't the driver have to press the brake?

No, I think these autonomous driving systems, you hit a button and it's supposed to drive and Okay, well, there was a guy who was charged with manslaughter for running the light on self driving, but you would think if you see the lights red, and you're on the self driving mode, you would slam on the brakes. You're seeing the advertisements where they have people singing and clapping their hands and doing other things reading. Los Angeles Times just reported a auto accident where two people

were killed. They're driving along and a Tesla went through the intersection on autopilot. and hit these people and killed them. The driver of that vehicle who was using the autopilot was charged with manslaughter. And this is the according the LA Times the first case in the United States where a person using autopilot in a car self driving feature has been charged with felony manslaughter. I don't know. It seems to me if you're going to use autopilot in a car, you want to keep your eye

on stuff. But I suspect a lot of people would say, well, it's autopilot. They told me I can do this and get out a book and start reading or have lunch or talk to their family or something like that. I don't know. Well, this fella Dowd says the problem. This is that Don project, he said that, in his study of the software that's being used in these cars like Tesla, is that there's a malfunction eight every eight

minutes, every 36 minutes. There's some sort of unforced error that occurs within the software sounds like a lawsuit to Tesla, you're right, Larissa, these car manufacturers that are using or installing and advertising automatic autopilot or autonomous driving. They do have liability if there's not a waiver in the in the contract that a court might court might

find to be enforceable. Excuse me. One other thing that I thought was interesting that I saw in the news I thought you might be interested in was this removal of Theodore Roosevelt's statute at the Museum of American it's a mismatch of Natural History. Yeah. This, this statute shows Theodore Roosevelt on a horse. And he's really buffed out, you know, Theodore Roosevelt was

kind of a chunky guy. He wasn't this big, giant guy. And walking next to his horse is a Indian with with a headgear on, on one side of him, and on the other side is a African American. And it really is, yeah, that's pretty faux pa now. Yeah. And they're removing it, the board of the museum, voted several years ago to remove it, because it's very offensive. It's racist, and also a symbol of colonialism.

So since they removed it, are they going to sell it? No, it's gonna go to the presidential library for Theodore Roosevelt. And that's probably an appropriate place for it. It's part of his history and it was made for to celebrate Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, however misguided it might have been.

Now I understand what this a year are doing. The state planning seminars, tell me about the seminars that you're going to be putting on, I'm going to be putting on estate planning seminars that are open to the public. The only thing that's required is registration on my website, which is southwest estate planning.com. The seminars will be the third Wednesday and Thursday of every

month. So this will be starting in February. And I'm going to be running them monthly in the seminars, the audience will learn about trusts wills, estate planning in general, we will discuss life insurance policies, and we will discuss a family wealth planning sessions. And I think that this topic is finally getting the attention that it deserves. Due to the pandemic more and more people are aware of their mortality and taking appropriate steps to protect their loved ones, their family

and their legacy. So in in these seminars, we will be talking about how to keep your family out of court and conflict, meaning creating proper state planning documents that family members cannot contest once a person is incapacitated or they have passed away. And this is important because a lot of people are unaware of the probate process, which is the process that occurs when a person dies to transfer the assets of a living person or excuse me, of a deceased person

to living beneficiaries. And also, people are unaware of the guardianship process. If a loved one or family member becomes incapacitated and does not die, but they're unable to manage their financial and medical affairs. I've been working in these areas of law for several years. And I think that it's a topic that deserves a lot of attention from the public because it will touch most people's lives. So these seminars are purely educational. And as I mentioned, the only

thing required is registration. There will be light hors d'oeuvres and a wine tasting Going along with an estate planning seminar, and if any of the listeners are interested in going they just need to register at Southwest estate planning.com. So registration at Southwest estate planning.com under the in person events tab. I hope to see everybody there and I look forward to helping everybody that's listening.

Marisa, you've had quite a lot of experience in handling probate and estate matters, have you not? I have I have represented celebrity estates, BB King estate, and I've also represented celebrities in estate planning. So that is my expertise. It's what I love. I love helping with the planning and in giving people that peace of mind and security that their affairs will be handled in the

event they can't handle them themselves. And I love assisting people with the complicated and perplexing probate process. Well before we sign off Larissa, did you have fun today? I did. Well, I did too. It's always nice to sit down and spend a little bit of time talking about current affairs with you.