Opinion ID: 2368166
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The tort of spoliation requires a viable underlying cause of action.

Text: In Estate of Day v. Willis we clarified that claims for intentional spoliation are limited to circumstances in which a valid underlying cause of action is prejudiced by the destruction of evidence. [27] As with Dooley's case, there were two court actions involved in Estate of Day. The first proceeding was a wrongful death action filed by Day's estate against the State of Alaska and security officers from Anchorage International Airport. [28] The officers initially encountered Day when they investigated cars parked near the airport after hours. The people in the area dispersed when the officers arrived; Day ran into some nearby woods. The security officers left after learning that one of the cars belonged to Day and that he was wanted on several criminal charges. Shortly thereafter, the security officers saw Day drive out of the area at high speed and gave chase. The chase culminated in Day's fatal car crash, and Day's estate brought a claim for wrongful death. The superior court granted summary judgment to the defendants, ruling that the officers did not have a duty to take Day into protective custody prior to the chase. [29] We affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the wrongful death action, but Day's estate later learned of a witness to the chase whose description of events contradicted the police officers' account. [30] Day's estate filed a second suit against the defendants, this time alleging that they intentionally failed to disclose the identity of the witness during the discovery phase of the wrongful death litigation. The superior court granted summary judgment to the defendants, dismissing the spoliation claim. We affirmed and explained, [a]n action based on the tort of spoliation is meritless unless it can be shown that a party's underlying cause of action has been prejudiced by the spoliation. [31] Day's estate failed to make out a valid claim for wrongful death because the defendants did not owe a duty to Day; it follows that the failure to disclose a witness to the chase could not have prejudiced the estate because the estate did not have a viable cause of action against the defendants. Allstate argues that an independent reason for dismissing Dooley's claim at the summary judgment level is that the absence of the Cook note did not prejudice Dooley's underlying negligence claim against Paul. The superior court correctly rejected this as a basis for the summary judgment motion. [32] Whether the Cook note would have made a difference in the Dooley v. Paul trial has not been determined. For purposes of the decision entered today, it is only important to observe that Dooley's claim for concealment of the Cook note alleges that a viable underlying cause of action was prejudiced by a defendant's intentional interference with necessary evidence.