Opinion ID: 6226276
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: place the risk of an erroneous judgment on the

Text: party who wrongfully created the risk; and (3) restore “the prejudiced party to the same position he would have been in absent the wrongful de- struction of evidence by the opposing party.” West, 167 F.3d at 779 (quoting Kronisch, 150 F.3d at 126). We agree with those circuits. A sanction is futile when it does not serve those prophylactic, punitive, and remedial rationales, and the imposition of a futile sanction is an abuse of discretion. See Flury, 427 F.3d at 940, 943 (reversing the district court’s imposition of a lesser sanction because the district court “failed to impose meaningful Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 21 Filed: 02/16/2022 JONES v. US 21 sanctions for plaintiff’s spoliation of critical evidence” and holding that “the extraordinary nature of plaintiff’s actions coupled with extreme prejudice to the defendant warrants dismissal”); see also Leon v. IDX Sys. Corp., 464 F.3d 951 (9th Cir. 2006) (affirming dismissal where lesser sanctions, like the exclusion of evidence or a jury instruction creating an evidentiary presumption, would be “futile”). The Claims Court’s sanction does not serve the prophylactic, punitive, or remedial rationales underlying the spoliation doctrine. Even before the Claims Court imposed its sanction, the government did not rely on the spoliated gun or any facts related to it. Indeed, the 2015 Claims Court decision in Jones I granting summary judgment to the government based on issue preclusion did not rely on the evidence forbidden by the sanction—fingerprints, blowback, and other evidence which may have been found on the spoliated gun. See Jones I, 122 Fed. Cl. at 523–30. Nor did Officer Norton rely on that prohibited evidence in his motion for summary judgment in the district court. Issue Preclusion Order, 149 Fed. Cl at 353. These opinions gave the United States a roadmap by which to prevail in this case without relying on the prohibited evidence. By granting a sanction preventing the United States from relying on evidence on which it never needed to rely in the first place, the Claims Court crafted a meaningless sanction that fails to deter the government from engaging in spoliation and places the risk of an erroneous judgment on Mr. Murray’s parents. It is no sanction at all to prevent a spoliator from relying on evidence which it does not need to support its case. The meaninglessness of the Claims Court’s sanction is confirmed by the loopholes in that sanction. Although it prevented the government from relying on the gun itself or facts related to that gun such as fingerprints or blowback, the Claims Court’s sanction does not prevent the government from relying on FBI agent testimony regarding the spoliated handgun or photographs of the spoliated Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 22 Filed: 02/16/2022 22 JONES v. US handgun. In fact, the Claims Court cited that evidence in its recitation of the facts: Agent Ashdown photographed a spent shell-casing that apparently had failed to eject properly, “jammed” inside the .380 handgun. The FBI re- tained possession of the .380 handgun. Agent Ash- down did not request a test firing of the .380 handgun, later testifying that the only purpose of test firing it would have been to confirm that it functioned and had been fired. Issue Preclusion Order, 149 Fed. Cl at 342 (internal citations omitted). By allowing the government to rely on its own testimony regarding the evidence it spoliated, the Claims Court effectively permits the government to sidestep the court’s already weak sanction. This non-sanction serves neither the prophylactic nor punitive rationales of an appropriate spoliation sanction. Nor does the Claims Court’s sanction serve to remedy the prejudice inflicted on Mr. Murray’s parents by the spoliation of the Hi-Point .380 handgun. The Claims Court found that Mr. Murray’s parents failed to show that the government’s destruction of the gun prejudiced them because they failed to provide more than speculation as to what evidence might have been found on the gun. The Claims Court held Mr. Murray’s parents to an impossible standard. Mr. Murray’s parents could not provide anything more than speculation as to what evidence might have been found on the Hi-Point .380 handgun because the government destroyed the gun along with any evidence Mr. Murray’s parents could have collected from it. As we have previously explained, a party may satisfy its burden to show prejudice by coming forward “with plausible, concrete suggestions as to what [the destroyed] evidence might have been.” Micron, 645 F.3d at 1328 (emphasis in original) (quoting Schmid v. Milwaukee Elec. Tool Corp., 13 F.3d 76, 80 (3d Cir. 1994)). In this case, plausible, concrete Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 23 Filed: 02/16/2022 JONES v. US 23 suggestions must suffice to show prejudice lest the government be permitted to avoid spoliation sanctions by virtue of the spoliation itself. Mr. Murray’s parents came forward with plausible concrete suggestions as to what evidence might have been found on the spoliated gun. For example, they suggested that forensic testing of the gun might have shown the presence of Officer Norton’s fingerprints. The gun may also have shown the presence or absence of blowback, or fingerprints indicating in which hand Mr. Murray, who is righthanded, held the gun. That this suggested evidence is both plausible and concrete is proven by the Tenth Circuit’s reliance on similar evidence in affirming summary judgment in favor of Officer Norton and other defendants. The Tenth Circuit held that “there is no genuine dispute of fact that the shooter was anyone but Murray himself,” based, in part, on the fact that there was no blowback observed on Officer Norton. Jones, 809 F.3d at 575. If absence of blowback on Officer Norton is evidence that he did not shoot Mr. Murry, it is a plausible and concrete suggestion that absence of blowback on the Hi-Point .380 handgun is evidence that it was not used to shoot Mr. Murray. Had the government not destroyed the gun, these suggestions may have been evidence that constituted a key part of Mr. Murray’s parents’ case. That the government’s spoliation of the gun deprived them of this potential evidence is prejudice. Although a sanction preventing the spoliator from relying on the evidence they destroyed might be appropriate in other cases, it is not appropriate in this case because it serves none of the rationales underlying the spoliation doctrine. We, thus, conclude that the Claims Court abused its discretion in crafting its sanction for the government’s spoliation of the Hi-Point .380 handgun, and we remand for consideration of a more appropriate sanction. Specifically, we remand for the Claims Court to determine the exact bounds of the appropriate remedy, such as an adverse inference or inferences, that should apply to any spoliated Case: 20-2182 Document: 57 Page: 24 Filed: 02/16/2022 24 JONES v. US evidence in this case. On remand, the Claims Court should also consider whether the government should be permitted to rely on secondary evidence related to the spoliated gun in the form of photographs and testimony where it has destroyed the primary evidence.