Opinion ID: 1642750
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: and F. Restriction of claims; Alternative sanctions.

Text: The trial court has the option of restricting the plaintiffs' claims to those based on the remaining evidence. It may disallow or restrict any claim predicated indispensably on evidence no longer available. It may fashion adverse interest and burden shifting instructions along the lines suggested by Justice Lyons in his dissent in Murray, 751 So.2d at 503-04: I write specially to state that I do not consider a spoliation instruction allowing an inference of wrongdoing from the destruction to be precluded every time the alleged spoliator makes a potentially self-serving claim of negligence. In such instances, the victim of spoliation should not be deprived of such an instruction merely upon the spoliator's asserting, `Oops, I dropped it.' However, in order to overcome such an assertion by the alleged spoliator, the victim should do more than simply prove the occurrence of the destruction, as was the case here. The victim should, however, be entitled to a spoliation instruction upon adducing evidence that would be sufficient for the jury to infer the commission of an intentional actevidence such as the rarity of such an occurrence of destruction in the ordinary course of business; the frequency with which such a destruction occurs under circumstances that make a claim possible; inconsistencies in the testimony of those asserting that simple negligence caused the destruction; or other evidence challenging the credibility of the persons claiming the destruction was caused merely by negligence. Even in instances where the circumstances surrounding the destruction of evidence suggest simple negligence, an instruction that is not so severe as to allow an inference of wrongdoing based on the fact of the destruction, but that shifts the burden of proof, might be appropriate, especially where the plaintiff has satisfied all other elements necessary to defeat a motion for a judgment as a matter of law. See Welsh v. United States, 844 F.2d 1239, 1246 (6th Cir. 1988), where the court recognized that `[d]estruction of potentially relevant evidence obviously occurs along a continuum of faultranging from innocence through the degrees of negligence to intentionality.' The Welsh court then analyzed the resulting penalties that are possible dependent upon the circumstances of each case, going from nothing to a burden-shifting rebuttable presumption to an inference that the missing evidence would have been unfavorable to the spoliator. A burden-shifting instruction in the case of a merely negligent loss would not require the innocent party to suffer the consequences resulting from the fact that his or her burden of proof has been made greater by the negligence of the adversary, and, at the same time, it would not impose an excessively harsh sanction upon a merely negligent party. See also the adverse-interest charges approved in Murray and in Campbell v. Williams, 638 So.2d 804 (Ala.1994). Thus, for example if an evidentiary basis for an adverse-interest charge premised on a finding by the jury of a wrongful destruction of evidence by the plaintiffs is established at trial, an instruction could be formulated relating to the inference the jury could draw adverse to the plaintiffs' theory of causation. Bearing in mind our long-established and compelling policy objective of affording litigants a trial on the merits whenever possible, Iverson, 553 So.2d at 89, and considering the factors and alternative sanctions discussed above, we conclude that the trial court exceeded its discretion in employing the most severe sanction that a court may apply, Iverson, 553 So.2d at 87. At the summary-judgment stage we must accept the explanations given by the plaintiffs for how and why various items become unavailable, including in this case the professed opinion and judgment of their experts that materials at the fire scene that were allowed to be demolished were not germane to a determination of the cause of the fire. Thus, viewing the record most favorably to Vesta and Wausau, we conclude that their culpability was of a relatively low range along a continuum of fault. Furthermore, there has not been complete destruction of material evidence; rather, a significant body of evidence remains. The plaintiffs have the burden of proving their theory of causation from that evidence whereas the defendants have no affirmative burden to establish a cause for the fire. The defendants have argued plausibly in their briefs to this Court numerous reasons why the causation sequence postulated by the plaintiffs' experts is flawed and invalid, including testing data they say indisputably was derived by the Sentry technician who repaired the HVAC unit approximately three weeks before the fire and that they say conclusively contradicts the plaintiffs' theory of causation. Seemingly the defendants will be able to mount an adequate defense even in the absence of the missing evidence. Having concluded that the summary judgments for the defendants cannot be affirmed on the basis of spoliation, we next consider the summary judgments entered for Lenz-Ramseur and Landmark on alternative grounds.