Opinion ID: 777043
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Destruction of Evidence Instruction

Text: 15 Appellants next contend that the district court erred in refusing to give their proposed instruction on the adverse inference that could be drawn from appellees' alleged destruction of evidence by failing to preserve and produce the tree's root ball. Appellants insist that their proposed instruction would not have been repetitious of the failure to produce instruction, and point out that the most relevant South Dakota Pattern Jury Instruction refers to the failure to produce evidence as well as the destruction of evidence. 7 Appellants also argue that they were entitled to such an adverse inference instruction as a sanction for the prejudicial destruction of evidence because they now cannot examine the root ball in order to refute the conclusions of appellees' expert witness. 16 The district court instructed the jury that it could draw a negative inference from appellees' failure to produce the root ball. See op. at 951-52. When viewed in the light of the instructions as a whole, we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to also give the proposed instruction regarding the adverse inference that could be drawn from appellees' alleged destruction of the evidence. The very inference that appellants sought to have the jury draw from their proposed instruction — that appellees' destruction of evidence indicated that the evidence was not favorable to appellees — could have been drawn from the failure to produce instruction that was given by the district court. We hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that submitting the proposed instruction to the jury would have been overly repetitious and would have placed undue emphasis on this aspect of appellants' case. See id. at 952; see also Dupre v. Fru-Con Eng'g, Inc., 112 F.3d 329, 335 (8th Cir.1997) (Repetitious instructions that place undue emphasis on a certain aspect of a party's case so as to prejudice the jury require reversal.).