Opinion ID: 2629963
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Spoliation of evidence jury instruction

Text: Bass-Davis argues that the jury should have been instructed by the district court at her request that there is a rebuttable presumption that lost evidence was harmful to the losing party. We agree in part. It is well established that a party is entitled to jury instructions on every theory of her case that is supported by the evidence. [2] In Reingold v. Wet `N Wild Nevada, Inc., we recognized that under NRS 47.250(3), when evidence is willfully destroyed, the trier of fact is entitled to presume that the evidence was adverse to the destroying party. [3] We further held that evidence is willfully destroyed even if the evidence is destroyed pursuant to an established company policy. [4] Here, approximately one week after she fell, Bass-Davis contacted the franchisees and requested copies of the store's incident report regarding her fall and the surveillance videotape from inside the store. The franchisees referred Bass-Davis to a Southland employee. Bass-Davis contacted the Southland employee and repeated her request, but she was never provided with either piece of evidence. Christopher Davis testified that the incident report was mailed to Southland, according to then corporate policy. He further testified that Southland received the surveillance videotape. Southland then forwarded the videotape to its insurance company. The insurer apparently lost the videotape. At the conclusion of trial, Bass-Davis offered the following jury instruction which was marked as proposed Instruction C: Where relevant evidence which would properly be part of this litigation is within the control of the defendants whose interest it would naturally be to produce it, and they fail to do so without a satisfactory explanation, the jury may draw an inference that such evidence would have been unfavorable to the defendants. [5] The district court refused this instruction. In her subsequent motion for a new trial under NRCP 59(a)(1), Bass-Davis asserted that this refusal constituted an abuse of discretion. The district court denied her motion. We conclude that Bass-Davis was entitled to a jury instruction regarding the spoliation of evidence inference and that the district court's refusal to so instruct the jury is grounds for a new trial. Our holding in Reingold relied, in part, on NRS 47.250(3) which provides a rebuttable presumption [t]hat evidence willfully suppressed would be adverse if produced. In this case, the evidence was not willfully suppressed; it was lost after the franchisees forwarded it to Southland pursuant to corporate policy. Since there is no evidence of willful suppression by Southland or its insurer, we conclude that it would be improper to apply the statutory rebuttable presumption in this case. Nevertheless, we agree with Bass-Davis that based upon the facts of this case the franchisees should be responsible for the fact that the evidence was lost. [6] Though the franchisees did not lose the evidence themselves, they did provide the evidence to Southland, which forwarded the evidence to its insurer, which, in turn, lost the evidence. For the purposes of safeguarding the videotape evidence, both Southland and its insurer were agents of the franchisees. The franchisees could have preserved the evidence by copying it before they forwarded it to their agents. Since they failed to do so, they are responsible for their agents' loss of the evidence. Other jurisdictions have recognized that the common law will infer that lost or destroyed evidence is adverse to the party who lost or destroyed it. [7] That inference rests on an acknowledgement that spoliation of evidence has a `devastating effect' . . . on the administration of justice. [8] Thus, once a party has notice of a potential claim, that party has a duty to exercise reasonable care to preserve information relevant to that claim. [9] We find this reasoning persuasive for cases such as this where there is no willful destruction of evidence. To hold otherwise would encourage potential defendants to forward damaging evidence to their insurers who could lose the evidence without any negative effect on the potential defendants. To avoid such an injustice, the following jury instruction shall be given when evidence which should have been preserved for trial is lost or destroyed but there is no evidence of willful suppression: You may infer that lost or destroyed evidence is unfavorable to the party who could have produced it and did not, if the evidence was (a) under the party's control and reasonably available to it and not reasonably available to the adverse party, and (b) lost or destroyed without satisfactory explanation after the party knew or should have known of the existence of the claim.