The intrigue deepens surrounding the early 2016 discussions around Uber’s acquisition of a self-driving trucking company, Otto, according to newly released court documents. Otto was founded by two then-high-level Google engineers.

Waymo now says that Uber is dragging its feet about providing evidence that may shed light on how, exactly, the company went about trying to sign a deal with the nascent Otto last year. In addition, excerpts of released transcripts from a recent deposition of an Uber executive show that the company was willing to act as a legal shield for its two soon-to-be employees—known as "indemnification"—if Google came after Uber following the deal to acquire Otto.

The filings come less than two weeks after a hearing in the ongoing Waymo v. Uber lawsuit. The suit involves the Google subsidiary, which sued Uber, alleging that one of its former employees, Anthony Levandowski, stole 14,000 proprietary files and took them to his new startup. However, Uber says it never received the files, and so it couldn’t have, and didn’t, implement them into its own products, services, or prototypes.

For now, the case is set to go to trial in San Francisco in October 2017—assuming the parties don't settle it first. The lawsuit has become the highest-profile legal battle in the self-driving sector and could have large implications as to which company ends up on top.

“Critical part”

In a July 31 letter to the magistrate judge overseeing one part of the case, Waymo's lawyers wrote that the company has yet to make available hundreds of deleted text messages from its then-CEO, Travis Kalanick, to Levandowski.

Rather, Uber has abdicated all responsibility for the text messages, passing the buck to Mr. Kalanick's personal counsel at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe ("Orrick"). Orrick has apparently retained its own digital forensics expert, who has recovered over 400 of the deleted text messages, including text messages Mr. Kalanick sent to Mr. Levandowski. Orrick represents that these text messages will be produced to Waymo by tomorrow, August 1.

None of the lawyers for Waymo, Uber, or Levandowski (who has been fired from Uber since the case began) responded to Ars' request for comment as to whether these messages had been recovered or handed over to Waymo as part of the civil discovery process within the deadline.

In a related matter, newly released materials also show that Uber was willing to indemnify Levandowski and his co-founder, Lior Ron, from any legal liability as they were making the deal.

A January 26, 2016 e-mail from Cameron Poetzscher, an Uber vice president, to Travis Kalanick (then-CEO), showed surprised that the company would agree to such terms.

"Did you tell Anthony that you would indemnify them if they get sued by G as part of or after the deal?" he wrote. "They're under that impression."

In deposition testimony given June 19, 2017, Poetzscher told Waymo lawyers that Levandowski and Ron informed Uber that the acquisition came with strings attached.

"They told us it was a critical part of the deal," Poetzscher said. "They wouldn't do the deal without indemnity. So, we negotiated an indemnity that we were comfortable with, with a lot of safeguards for us."

Later in the deposition, Poetzscher also re-iterated what Uber lawyers have said in court, that they were not seeking any proprietary materials from Waymo.

"On several occasions, we discussed with them, don't bring anything," he said. "We don't want anything."

More hearings are scheduled in the case for later this month.