A San Diego County judge has ruled that Tesla is liable for fraud and negligent misrepresentation in a homeowner’s lawsuit over a Solar Roof that never produced power. The order, signed by Judge Cynthia Freeland on Sept. 11, did not follow a trial. It came as a sanction for what the court found were repeated failures by Tesla to hand over evidence.
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The distinction matters for what happens next. A jury has not weighed the fraud claim; the only question left for trial on those counts is how much Tesla owes in compensatory and punitive damages.
The case is Conroy v. Tesla, No. 37-2022-00043670, filed in 2022 in the North County division of San Diego Superior Court by Ambrose Conroy of Rancho Santa Fe. Electrek’s account of the court record, published on Nov. 7, reviewed the minute orders, the joint trial readiness report and the exhibit list. Conroy signed up for a Solar Roof in March 2020, and by February 2021 his contract had grown from $82,210 for 13.1 kW to roughly $110,000 for an 18.2 kW roof plus six Powerwalls after two amendments.
The discovery sanction behind the fraud finding
Electrek reports that the court deemed Tesla liable after sanctions for withheld evidence, including Microsoft Teams messages, OSHA logs, emails with county inspectors and more than 20 internal reports from Tesla’s Bolt system. Earlier monetary sanctions of $15,467.50 in February 2026 and $13,500 in June 2026 had addressed privilege-log and document-production problems.
Judge Freeland wrote that there was ample evidence to support that the defendants had acted willfully. In an Oct. 27 order denying reconsideration, she wrote that late-produced documents could support the theory that Tesla knowingly used Conroy’s home as an experiment while knowing it lacked the experience to perform as promised. That language is the court’s characterization of what the evidence could support, not a finding after live testimony.
Tesla argues the sanction is unduly punitive, violates due process and amounts to a directed verdict on fraud. The company says the discovery dispute was unrelated to the fraud claims and that it has since produced everything relevant. On Oct. 29 it asked the court to stay the case while it petitions the California Court of Appeal.
The roof, the contract and the claimed cost of repair
By Electrek’s account, the roof was never finished, never passed county inspection and never produced power; a further inspection failure came in February 2025. Those descriptions rest on Conroy’s allegations and the court record, though Tesla has stipulated to liability on breach of contract, breach of warranty and negligence in the Oct. 20 trial readiness report.
Conroy says repairing the damage will cost well over $2.5 million. In April 2022, Tesla offered $5,000 to settle. Exhibit 224 on the joint exhibit list is described as January 2021 text messages from Tesla’s director of model engineering, Bobby Yang, referring to experimenting on the house; Electrek has not seen the texts, and Elon Musk appears on Conroy’s witness list.
Solar Roof price disputes before this case
Conroy is not the only customer to have sued over the product. A federal class action in San Francisco by Matthew Amans and Babek Malek alleged that Tesla raised Solar Roof prices after customers signed contracts; Amans’s price reportedly rose from about $71,000 to about $146,000, according to Bloomberg Law’s report on a rejected $6 million deal in August 2023. A judge turned the settlement away for now and required more information, Law360 reported, in a case it said involved about 8,200 buyers.
The settlement was later filed in amended form. Roofing Contractor’s coverage put the payout at slightly more than $6 million, for a class of more than 6,300 customers who had signed Solar Roof contracts. Earlier, Mealey’s reported in July 2022 that a federal judge dismissed part of the unfair-competition claims for failing to plead intent specifically.
Those cases turned on pricing, not on a roof that never worked, and the coverage reviewed here describes no fraud finding in them against Tesla. The Conroy order stands apart because a court has deemed the company liable for fraud, even though the route to that result was a sanction and not a verdict. Electrek has separately reported on Tesla discontinuing the Solar Roof, so the dispute concerns past installations more than a product on the market.
The open issues are procedural, and the next months will show whether the fraud ruling survives. If the Court of Appeal declines to intervene and the stay is denied, jurors would hear evidence only on damages, which could include punitive awards. If the appeal succeeds, the case could revert to a contested fraud trial with the withheld documents in evidence. A trial readiness conference is set for Dec. 4, the original Nov. 20 trial date is off, and Conroy’s lawyers want a December trial. Electrek speculates the issue sanction may not survive appeal, but the company has already conceded breach and negligence, so even a reversal on fraud would leave liability on other counts in place.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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