Opinion ID: 1632341
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Restriction of claims; alternative sanctions.

Text: As we stated in Vesta Fire, in fashioning a remedy for a plaintiff's spoliation of the evidence, the trial court may restrict the plaintiff's claims to those based on the remaining evidence. It may also disallow or restrict any claim predicated indispensably on evidence no longer available. 901 So.2d at 97. The Court of Civil Appeals noted in a similar case involving EIFS that the destroyed EIFS materials were the evidence in the case. Thompson, 889 So.2d at 597. Moreover, the trial court in this case distinguished between the EIFS defendants, who were not given an opportunity to inspect, and the one defendant that was. The trial court denied a summary-judgment motion filed by Wayne's Pest Control because Story provided Wayne's Pest Control with the opportunity to inspect the damage to his house. We cannot conclude that the trial court exceeded its discretion in entering summary judgments on Story's claims against the EIFS defendants on the ground of spoliation of the evidence instead of imposing some less severe sanction.