That kind of thing might fly in some arenas, but judges have literally no sense of humor when evidence is “lost” in a criminal case, or civil wrongful death suit. That’s more or less a quick way to lose in the worst possible way.
Judge - you don't understand - the office that's responsible for this remote deletio^w securing of data is in another jurisdiction (Canada!). So Uber USA is absolved[1].
As I said, context matters. In the context of a death, this kind of thing is doom. When someone is killed, there is also a lot of cooperation across jurisdictions.
