Opinion ID: 1277602
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Public Policy Favoring the Finality of Judgments

Text: Also weighing in favor of recognizing a tort remedy for third party spoliation is the harmony between a tort remedy and the principle that judgments should be final and should not be subject to direct or collateral attack or relitigation once all appeals are exhausted. We refused in Cedars-Sinai supra, 18 Cal.4th 1, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 248, 954 P.2d 511, to recognize a tort remedy for intentional first party spoliation in large measure because such a remedy would amount to a collateral attack on the validity of the judgment on the cause of action to which the evidence was relevant. In an instance of first party spoliation, the spoliator and the spoliation victim are opposing parties in relation to that underlying cause of action; a first party spoliation tort remedy would effectively require the spoliation victim and the spoliator to relitigate the underlying cause of action. ( Id. at pp. 8-11, 74 Cal.Rptr.2d 248, 954 P.2d 511.) If the spoliator were found liable in damages to the spoliation victim and were forced to pay the difference between the amount of its actual liability in the underlying action and the amount of liability the trier of fact would have imposed had the spoliated evidence been available, the practical effect of the spoliation action would be to upset the judgment in the underlying action and replace it with a new determination of liability between the parties to that action. That concern is absent here, because tort liability for third party spoliation does not pose a threat to the finality of adjudication. Nothing in the policy favoring finality of adjudication prevents different parties from litigating the same issue in different proceedings. A third party spoliator by definition is not a party to the underlying cause of action to which the spoliated evidence is relevant, and the spoliator has not litigated with the spoliation victim any issue relating to that evidence or to the underlying cause of action. Any judgment against the third party spoliator would not alter the previous determination of liability between the spoliation victim and the spoliation victim's opponent in the underlying action. A tort remedy would therefore have no effect, either formally or practically, on the judgment rendered on the cause of action to which the spoliated evidence was relevant and would not clash with the public policy favoring finality of adjudication.