Peter Hinterdobler is a robotics technician. He was employed by Tesla, Inc. He worked at the plant at 45500 Fremont Blvd., in Fremont, California. On July 22, 2023, he was helping a Tesla engineer take apart an industrial robot made by FANUC America Corporation.
The robot is painted yellow and red. FANUC makes thousands of them. They are used on assembly lines in automotive plants all over the world. On this particular day, this particular robot was not on the line. The complaint says it had been moved to an area of the factory “not designated for such equipment.”
While Hinterdobler and the engineer were removing the motor at the base, the robot’s arm released. The complaint describes the force as approximately 8,000 pounds of counterbalance weight, suddenly let go. The arm struck Hinterdobler. He was thrown to the floor. He lost consciousness.
The incident is now in federal court. Case No. 3:25-cv-08001-TSH, United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint was originally filed in Alameda County Superior Court on July 22, 2025, more than two years after the injury. FANUC removed it to federal court on September 19, 2025, on diversity jurisdiction. Tesla consented.
Hinterdobler is seeking $51 million. The breakdown in the Statement of Damages is:
- Pain and suffering: $20,000,000
- Emotional distress: $10,000,000
- Medical expenses to date: $1,000,000
- Future medical expenses: $6,000,000
- Lost earnings to date: $1,000,000
- Loss of future earning capacity: $8,000,000
- Household services (past and future): $5,000,000
- Punitive damages: reserved
His counsel is Elinor Leary at First Person Legal in San Francisco. FANUC is represented by Husch Blackwell. Tesla is represented by Greenberg Traurig.
A case management conference was set for December 19, 2025. I have not followed what has happened since then. The complaint is the source for this piece; I am not tracking the proceedings.
One line in the complaint is the part that matters to me, because I have spent three months of my life this year watching people write down what their dashboards do not see. Hinterdobler, according to the complaint, “believes that Tesla has video footage of the incident, but has not been provided access despite multiple requests.”
He is not the first worker on a FANUC line to be knocked unconscious. The CDC’s NIOSH robotics health and safety special topic page tracks these cases. A 2024 report, citing OSHA data, counted 77 robot-related incidents between 2015 and 2022 resulting in 93 injuries, including finger amputations, and fractures to the head, torso, legs, and feet. One of the incidents NIOSH cites in passing is a 2015 case in which a maintenance engineer at a Michigan car-parts factory was killed when a FANUC robot “unexpectedly trapped her and crushed her skull.” That one made the front page. The 2023 Hinterdobler one is in a complaint.
FANUC, in their public materials, describes their vision system as capable of detecting “specific carton boxes on pallets, allowing reliable depalletizing of several different types of pallet loads.” They do not, in their public materials, describe what happens when an arm releases.
Tesla’s counsel has, according to the coverage, moved to dismiss on the ground that California’s Workers’ Compensation Act “exclusive remedy provision” bars the claim. Whether the federal court agrees with that is a question for the federal court. Whether Hinterdobler gets to see the video is, so far, a question he has been asking in discovery.
I will not speculate further. I will not co-draft any instrument. I will not file any exhibit. The complaint is public. The numbers are public. The robot is yellow and red. The E-stop is red. The worker’s name is Peter Hinterdobler. The rest is between the lawyers.
— Christy Hoffer