‘Star Trek’ Actor’s Family Reaches Settlement With Fiat Chrysler After 2016 Killing

Anton Yelchin. Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer March 23, 2018

The parents of treasured Jewish actor Anton Yelchin, who died in a horrific accident in 2016, have reached a settlement with the company that produced the car that killed him.

Yelchin, who was best known for his leading role in the new “Star Trek” movies, was killed in 2016 when his 2015 Grand Cherokee Jeep Summit California Edition rolled backwards, crushing him between the car and a fence. Just weeks after the 27 year-old actor’s death, his family sued the Fiat Chrysler company, citing “defective design and/or manufacture.” Jeep models similar to the one that killed Yelchin had been recalled. The Yelchin lawsuit also suggested that the model of car Yelchin drove did not have “sufficient rollaway prevention features as well as sufficient warning features.” Fiat Chrysler announced in a statement on Thursday that the company has settled with the Yelchin family for an undisclosed quantity.

Yelchin, whose understated charisma sparkled in movies like “Charlie Bartlett” and “Like Crazy,” was born to a pair figure skating couple in Leningrad who fled the Soviet Union due to anti-Semitic oppression in 1989. They arrived in the US as refugees when their son was six months old. Yelchin is currently appearing posthumously in movie theaters in “Thoroughbreds”; you can read Becky Scott’s review of his excellent final performance here. He will be remembered for his quiet charm and dazzling talent.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO