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STORY: Opening statements began Thursday in the first U.S. trial over allegations that Tesla’s autopilot feature led to a death.

The result of the civil lawsuit in a California state court over the driver assistant feature could help shape similar cases across the country.

The suit alleges the Autopilot system caused the 2019 crash of a Model 3 car which suddenly veered off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour, struck a palm tree and burst into flames, all in the span of seconds.

It killed the driver and seriously hurt the two passengers including a then 8-year-old boy who was disemboweled.

The lawsuit, filed against Tesla by the passengers and the driver’s estate accuses the company of knowing that Autopilot and other safety systems were defective when it sold the car. The plaintiffs’ lawyer asserted in his opening statement that Tesla was selling experimental vehicles with a self-driving system in “beta” or not ready for release.

Tesla has denied liability, saying the driver consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel. The electric-vehicle maker also claims it was not clear whether Autopilot was engaged at the time of crash.

It won a bellwether trial in Los Angeles in April with a strategy of saying that it tells drivers that its technology requires human monitoring, despite the "Autopilot" name.

Jurors in that case which involved an injured driver told Reuters after the verdict that they believed Tesla warned drivers about its system and that driver distraction was to blame.

The stakes are higher in the trial this week, and in other cases, because people died.

This trial is expected to last a few weeks.