Judge Sanctions Tesla Over “Useless” Evidence Dump
The trial delay follows an October 24 sanction order in which Judge Robinson rebuked Tesla for delivering more than 123,000 pages of testing documents without metadata or filenames — rendering them, in his words, “virtually useless.”
The documents, tied to tests of the 2021 Tesla Model 3 on uneven surfaces and speed bumps, were produced only in July 2025, after months of noncompliance with a November 2023 discovery order.
“Plaintiffs would have to print nearly 125,000 pages and manually match them to Tesla’s key,” Robinson said. “Had Tesla produced them in native format, review would’ve been manageable.”
The judge concluded that Tesla’s data dump was designed to make discovery “more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.” Tesla was ordered to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees related to the sanction motion.
The Deadly Coral Gables Crash
The case stems from a September 2021 crash in Coral Gables, Florida, when Nicholas Garcia, 20, was driving his Tesla Model 3 at 90 mph in a 30-mph zone. After striking a speed bump, the car lost control, slammed into a tree, and burst into flames — killing Garcia and his passenger, Alcala.
Alcala’s family accuses Tesla of designing a defective suspension and chassis that failed under “ordinary and foreseeable driving conditions,” arguing the low frame and unprotected battery made the Model 3 fatally unsafe.
Garcia’s family filed its own suit, later consolidated with the Alcala case in 2022.
