Opinion ID: 163221
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Failure to Draw Adverse Inferences

Text: Finally, the appellants argue that the district court erred in not drawing an adverse inference from the appellees’ failure to offer into evidence at trial the results of laboratory tests of certain air monitoring devices in the facility. The appellants assert that the report was listed as an exhibit in the pre-trial order but was “not offered at trial after Plaintiffs’ counsel . . . elicited admissions from Defendants’ employees that . . . the chain of custody was intentionally not maintained when it could have been.” Aplts’ Br. at 42. The appellants argue that the district court “should have drawn an adverse inference to the effect that . . . the results would have confirmed that a [violation occurred].” Id. at 43. The appellants’ cited authority on this point is inapposite. They first cite Ready Mixed Concrete v. National Labor Relations Board, 81 F.3d 1546 (10th Cir. 1996), where we simply approved of the NLRB’s use of the adverse inference rule and noted in passing that the rule had also been applied in other civil contexts. Id. at 1552. Moreover, in that opinion we cited with approval a case from a sister circuit for the proposition that the “decision whether to draw the adverse inference lies with the factfinder.” Ready Mixed Concrete, 81 F.3d at 1552 (citing United Auto Workers Int’l Union v. National Labor Relations Board, 459 F.2d 1329, 1339 (D.C. Cir. 1972)). The factfinder here was, of course, the -12- court itself, which makes the appellants’ citation to another of our cases still more confusing. In Gilbert v. Cosco, Inc., 989 F.2d 399 (10th Cir. 1993), we reviewed a trial court’s decision not to instruct a jury on the adverse inference rule. We noted that the adverse inference rule merely permits a jury to draw adverse inferences, id. at 405, and we approved the judge’s decision not to accept the plaintiffs’ proposed jury instruction on adverse inferences. Id. at 406. Most importantly, we stated that the adverse inference rule should only be invoked when, among other requirements, “the evidence is available to the suppressing party, but not to the party seeking production [and] it appears that there has been actual suppression or withholding of evidence.” Id. 4 We thus find no error in the district court’s determination that the appellees’ failure to present certain evidence did not mandate a verdict for the appellants. The appellants possessed and could have offered into evidence the appellee’s documentation of that analysis. Their decision not to do so cannot constitute error on the part of the district court. 4 Even the unpublished case to which the appellants refer, Jordan F. Miller Corp. v. Mid-Continent Aircraft Service Inc., 1998 WL 68879 (10th Cir. Feb. 20, 1998), notes that “an adverse inference instruction would not have been appropriate [where] there was no evidence of bad faith.” Id. at . -13-