Opinion ID: 2630199
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sanctions for lost original chart

Text: Thomas next challenges the district court's refusal to impose preclusive or other significant sanctions on WMC for its negligence in having lost the original paper version of the emergency room chart. [A] trial court's decision on whether to impose sanctionsincluding an adverse inference instructionfor the destruction or spoliation of evidence, is committed to the trial court's discretion. Bass-Davis v. Davis, 122 Nev. 442, 447, 134 P.3d 103, 106 (2006). [I]f the district court, in rendering its discretionary ruling on whether to give an adverse inference instruction [or to impose other sanctions] has examined the relevant facts, applied a proper standard of law, and, utilizing a [demonstrably] rational process, reached a conclusion that a reasonable judge could reach, affirmance is appropriate. Id. at 447-48, 134 P.3d at 106 (quoting Garfoot v. Fireman's Fund Ins. Co., 228 Wis.2d 707, 599 N.W.2d 411, 416 (Wis.Ct.App.1999)). Some background helps give context to the sanctions dispute. Everyone, including Thomas, recognized the importance of the emergency room chart. Thomas obtained a copy of the chart from WMC before discovery and produced it at the early case conference. In the early case conference report, the parties agreed to Bates-number and use Thomas's copy of the chart as a master exhibit. In deposition, the individuals who made entries to the chart authenticated them. Although Thomas served requests for production on WMC that, if enforced, would have called for WMC to produce the original chart for inspection and fresh copying, to which WMC responded, no inspection occurred and no motion to compel was ever filed. The first firm trial date was continued to accommodate a conflict in Thomas's expert's calendar. Before the continuance, all parties had advised the court they were prepared to proceed with trial. Just two weeks before the already-continued trial was set to begin, Thomas filed a motion to strike the defendants' pleadings and/or to exclude the master exhibit copy of the chart as evidence at trial. Thomas based her motion on an exchange of letters between WMC's and Thomas's lawyers, sent after discovery closed and the original trial had been continued, in which Thomas asked to see the original paper chart and WMC said it searched but could not find it. WMC attested to its practice of creating an electronic copy of its emergency room chart entries by scanning them at the end of each day. The hospital still had the electronic copies of the chart notes for January 13, 2003. Its risk manager had compared them to the original paper chart in 2005 when he verified WMC's answers to Thomas's interrogatories and said the copies were the same. At the hearing that followed, the court offered Thomas a trial continuance to develop what it deemed the speculative assertion that the paper original might differ from the master exhibit copy. Thomas declined the offered continuance. Over WMC's objection, the court ruled that Thomas could raise WMC's loss of the paper original as an issue at trial and, to facilitate that, ordered WMC to make its records custodian available to Thomas as a trial witness. Beyond these measures, the court denied further relief. The court based its decision on the fact that WMC had provided Thomas with a copy of the original chart early on; Thomas's delay in raising the issue, which the court took to mean Thomas herself saw no need to double check the master exhibit copy against the original; and the prejudice and confusion any other sanction would cause to WMC's co-defendant, Dr. Hardwick, who had never had custody of the original paper chart. The district court did not abuse its discretion in declining preclusion sanctions and the adverse inference instruction Thomas proposed. The court in Allen Pen Co. v. Springfield Photo Mount Co., 653 F.2d 17, 23 (1st Cir.1981), faced similar competing policy concerns. In Allen Pen, one party sought a preclusion order and/or adverse inference instruction based on its opponent's destruction of certain documents after consulting them to answer interrogatories. Id. Unlike this case, where the chart was copied and the copies authenticated before the paper original was lost, no duplicates survived in Allen Pen (though the information could have been re-created in discovery from third parties). Id. As here, the sanctions proponent did not push to see the original documents or bring the matter to the trial court's attention until just before trial and then sought what amounted to liability-determining sanctions and/or an adverse inference instruction. Id. The district court denied the motion and the court of appeals affirmed. Id. at 23-24. It held that, under the circumstances, the sanctions proponent seeks far too draconian a sanction. . . . Having failed to seek lesser remedies, it cannot wait for trial and then seek close to a declaration of victory on the issue. Id. at 23; see JOM, Inc. v. Adell Plastics, Inc., 193 F.3d 47, 49-50 (1st Cir. 1999) (upholding order denying sanctions for destroyed evidence where the proponent delayed raising the issue until the eve of trial); Gault v. Nabisco Biscuit Co., 184 F.R.D. 620, 622 (D.Nev.1999) (a party who waits an unreasonable period of time before moving to enforce discovery waives enforcement remedies). This case presents a stronger case against reversal for failure to impose adequate sanctions than either Allen Pen or Bass-Davis. Here, the original chart was copied early on. All parties accepted the copy as authentic. Thomas offered no evidence, only argument, to suggest the stipulated master exhibit copy was not an exact duplicate of the paper original; no motion to compel inspection of the original was made; Thomas, as the sanctions proponent, was not forced to trial minus otherwise unavailable evidence. As the trial court found, all parties, including Thomas, had agreed from the beginning that the master exhibit copy was authentic and Thomas had nothing to say it wasn't. Compare Young v. Johnny Ribeiro Building, 106 Nev. 88, 92, 787 P.2d 777, 779 (1990) (sanctions proponent proved the evidence had been materially altered, making it fair to assume other undetected alterations had occurred; with the original effectively unavailable, claim-terminating sanctions were appropriate whether or not preceded by less severe sanctions), with Bass-Davis, 122 Nev. at 446, 449, 455, 134 P.3d at 105, 107-08, 111 (reversing for failure to give an adverse inference instruction where a videotape was lost without being copied and noting that in that circumstance an adverse inference instruction is appropriate to `restor[e] the evidentiary balance' (quoting Turner v. Hudson Transit Lines, Inc., 142 F.R.D. 68, 75 (S.D.N.Y.1991))). [8] Although the court offered Thomas a continuance so she could pursue discovery into the lost original and whether it might have varied from the electronic and other copies available, Thomas rejected this option. Cf. DesRosiers v. Moran, 949 F.2d 15, 22 (1st Cir.1991) (declining to reverse order denying sanctions when the proponent elected to proceed to trial). Under these circumstances, the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing Thomas to introduce evidence of WMC's negligent loss of the original chart but finding that more severe sanctions were unwarranted because waived.