IN THE MATTER OF

THE LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES OF MR. SANDIPAN ROY AND ORS.

VERSUS
YESLA LIMITED
1. Endor is a country with laws in pari materia with India. Yesla Limited, a company
headquartered in the state of Lagrima in Endor, is a very large company that manufactures
self-driving electric cars. When Yesla introduced these self-driving cars “NUCar” in 2019,
the market for the self-driving cars was not substantial in Endor. However, the founders of
Yesla believed that there is a potential for the NUCar in Endor.

2. These self-driving cars have a setting which sets how aggressive the Artificial Intelligence
(“AI”) of the car will be when driving. In order to make the settings a key feature and a
Unique Selling Point (“USP”), the NUCar’s self-driving mode feature is heavily
advertised. The settings range from “mild mannered citizen” to “Mad Max, Fury Road”.

3. In the Mad Max setting, the car will not break any laws (such as exceeding speed limits)
but will be much more aggressive in taking turns and changing lanes. At the launch of a
line of these self-driving cars, the founder and CEO of Yesla, Ira Scent, revealed research
conducted by the Endorian Institute of Technology (“EIT”) which shows that the NUCar
(even when set to Mad Max) is much safer than cars controlled directly by humans in terms
of the possibility of getting into an accident. A short report co-authored by Yesla and EIT
was also released prior to NUCar’s launch, which stated that a self-driving car such as
NUCar, even while on an aggressive driving mode, would be safer to drive than any car
driven by a human, and the likelihood of accidents was less than one controlled by humans.

4. Ira Scent further noted that the default setting of the cars is mild-mannered citizen and that
when a user attempts to set the car to Mad Max, they would be confronted by a prompt
stating that there is an increased chance of the car getting in to an accident if the car is set
to Mad Max. In order for the user to go ahead to that setting, they must hit agree to this
dialog prompt.

5. The NUCar was released to the market in April 2019, and immediately became a huge
success with thousands of vehicles being sold. However, in June 2019, a NUCar was
involved in a major traffic accident on a highway in the state of Lagrima. When news of
this major accident reached the media, it was found upon investigation that the accident
occurred while the car was driving in the Mad Max mode.

6. The NUCar was reported to have cut off another car on a busy highway which in turn had
caused a massive traffic pile up in which 7 people were seriously injured, and one person,
Mr. Sandipan Roy, was killed.
7. After investigation, the police came to the conclusion that the accident was caused by the
self-driving car and that the rest of the cars in the accident could not have been responsible
for the accident. The accident was caused when the NUCar on its Mad Max mode changed
lanes on the highway at a high speed. The person in the self-driving car, Mr. Kailash
Mohanty, was also injured in the accident, but did not suffer any permanent harm. The car
with whom he had the immediate impact was being driven by Mr. Roy, who died upon
impact. The other persons injured were those who could not avoid the accident and collided
with the cars.

8. There was immense backlash against the NUCar once this information was released to the
public, and a hue and cry was raised about road safety and use of AI. In response to this
incident, Yesla released a press statement in July 2019 with the following points:
a) That Yesla NUCars even on the Mad Max setting are still safer than human drivers due
to the possibility of human error.
b) That the car had not broken any traffic laws and that aggressive driving is not a crime.
c) That the user of the car had accepted the possibility of the increased chance of accidents
as shown in the dialogue prompt and had thus taken on the liability for the accident.

9. Unhappy with what was perceived as an attempt to salvage its sales by Yesla, the victims
of the accident (including Mr. Mohanty) and their legal representatives filed a suit before
the Lagrima High Court seeking the following reliefs:
I. That Yesla be required to pay damages for the accident that had occurred as it was
responsible for the creation of the AI and the creation of Mad Max mode, and was
therefore liable for the accident rather than the passenger of the car.
II. That by merely causing the user to click on a prompt informing them of increased
chances of accidents, the company did not absolve itself of its liability.
III. That the Mad Max mode of self-driving cars be banned because it is a danger to public
safety.