It is well established that when
spoliation of evidence occurs, a court may impose discovery sanctions pursuant to Rule 37(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and more generally, pursuant to a court's "inherent power to manage its own affairs.
By now, it should be abundantly clear that the duty to preserve means what it says and that a failure to preserve records-paper or electronic-and to search in the right places for those records, will inevitably result in the
spoliation of evidence.
3d 69,73), in which the New York Court of Appeals held that no independent tort third party negligent
spoliation of evidence was cognizable in New York, about the nature of the harm incurred or the extent of the plaintiffs damages.
66) The jurisprudence of the SJC regarding spoliation is instructive in crafting a proposal for adopting a level of culpability required for an adverse inference instruction based upon the
spoliation of evidence.
The duty to preserve evidence must be taken seriously and measures can and should be put in place to avoid
spoliation of evidence and resultant potential sanctions, which may at a minimum, hamper, and at worst completely eliminate, the defense of a lawsuit.
Also included is a transcript of a motions hearing for sanctions for
spoliation of evidence.
Failure to preserve such information can result in monetary sanctions, or, worse, a finding of
spoliation of evidence.
More recently, however, the
spoliation of evidence has resulted in the ability to assert an independent cause of action in tort.
If an association follows the policy's guidelines for periodic destruction only when it anticipates an investigation or a lawsuit, the policy will not be a valid defense to a charge of obstruction of justice or
spoliation of evidence.
This "digital shredding" can still become what lawyers call negligent or willful
spoliation of evidence.
With plaintiff attorneys filing
spoliation of evidence claims at an alarming rate in an attempt to drive up the value of their cases, business owners and risk managers need to know the law on
spoliation of evidence as well as the techniques and benefits of preserving evidence.
the district court confronted the shockingly pervasive problem of
spoliation of evidence.