A review of documents from the lawsuit that resulted in a $243 million judgment against Tesla reveals the EV maker withheld collision data critical to the plaintiffs’ case, despite repeated requests from police and attorneys, according to Electrek’s Fred Lambert.

Lambert lays out a timeline that begins with a 2019 collision in Key Largo, Fla. A Model S, operating in Autopilot mode, collided with a stopped vehicle which in turn struck two people, killing one. The Tesla’s driver admitted to being distracted by a dropped phone.

Tesla refused to settle a lawsuit, which resulted in a penalty of $43 million in compensatory damages — one-third of the total liability — plus $200 million in capped punitive damages.

“Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a ‘collision snapshot’ — video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc. — to Tesla’s servers, the ‘Mothership,’ and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access,” Lambert writes. “What ensued were years of battle to get Tesla to acknowledge that this collision snapshot exists and is relevant to the case.”

Read more at Electrek