Opinion ID: 1057800
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: lester’s credibility

Text: In addition to lying about deleting his Facebook page, Lester made a number of representations throughout discovery that were ultimately determined to be untrue. Of particular note, it was determined that Lester lied about his history of depression and past use of anti-depressants, and he made false claims about doing certain volunteer work. As a result of these misrepresentations, specifically the deletion of his Facebook page, the trial court ordered that the following adverse inference jury instruction would be given: The Court instructs the jury that the Plaintiff, Isaiah Lester, was asked in discovery in this case to provide information from his Facebook account. In violation of the rules of this Court, before responding to the discovery, he intentionally and improperly deleted certain photographs from his Facebook account, at least one of which cannot be recovered. You should presume that the photograph or photographs he deleted from his Facebook account were harmful to his case. The Court further instructs the jury that the presumption from this inference should not affect 7 any award due to the beneficiaries, Gary Scott and Jeanne Scott. The trial court noted that Allied Concrete knew of the misrepresentations prior to trial. Thus, the trial court ruled that Lester’s misrepresentations “related solely to the issue of damages and were mitigated, to the extent appropriate, by an adverse jury instruction, thus, they do not affect the validity of the verdict as to liability.” The trial court read the jury instruction twice, once while Lester was testifying and again before the closing arguments.