Opinion ID: 2518040
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: We Decline to Adopt a Tort of Spoliation in This Case Because Skyline Has Admitted Liability in the Hills' Underlying Wrongful-Death Action

Text: ¶ 31 On appeal, the Hills allege that UPS and Liberty Mutual negligently and/or intentionally altered or destroyed evidence related to their underlying wrongful-death action against Skyline. Because UPS and Liberty Mutual are not parties in the wrongful-death case, first-party spoliation is not at issue here; the issue properly framed is whether this court will recognize an independent tort of negligent and/or intentional third-party spoliation of evidence. ¶ 32 I am doubtful that existing nontort remedies sufficiently deter intentional third-party spoliators or adequately compensate victims of such spoliation. When third parties are involved, the incentive to spoliate evidence may simply be too great. [5] As Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson has explained, the incentive to destroy evidence is best appreciated by imagining the spoliator as an amoral calculator ... who cares only for the material consequences of his actions. Charles R. Nesson, Incentives to Spoliate Evidence in Civil Litigation: The Need for Vigorous Judicial Action, 13 Cardozo L.Rev. 793, 795 (1991). This amoral spoliator is a pure cost-benefit calculator, moved by the simple calculus of risk against advantage. Unlike good men and women who are influenced by conscience, the [spoliator] is unmoved by soft considerations of ethics and morality except as they translate... into bottom line effects. While the good man feels obliged by conscience to obey the law, the [spoliator] will commit the tort or crime if the expected gain exceeds the expected loss. Id. I agree with Professor Nesson and fear that without tort liability, third partiesespecially corporate entitieswill conclude that the benefits of evidence spoliation outweigh the unlikely imposition of court sanctions, administrative fines, and criminal penalties. [6] Indeed, as this case shows, evidence tends to disappear when the risk of seldom-enforced nontort remedies are weighed against the risk of payment on a wrongful-death claim. This is especially problematic considering that the intentional spoliation of evidence threatens to undermine the integrity of our entire legal system. ¶ 33 Notwithstanding the need to deter third-party spoliation and compensate its victims, this is not an appropriate case to adopt an independent tort of third-party spoliation of evidence. Of course, I recognize that the holding in this case subverts my expressed intolerance for spoliation; my expression of contempt for third-party spoliation is, in light of this case, little more than rhetoric. ¶ 34 Regardless of the rhetorical nature of our decision today, Skyline has already admitted liability in the Hills' underlying wrongful-death action. Because any evidence spoliated by UPS and Liberty Mutual relates only to proving liability in the underlying action, not damages, the Hills' legal remedy is unaffected by the alleged spoliation of evidence. Therefore, the Hills cannot show a causal link between the damages asserted in their underlying wrongful-death claim and the alleged spoliation of evidence by UPS and Liberty Mutual. As a result, [t]his appeal presents simply an abstract question of law which does not rest upon existing facts or rights that would affect the outcome in the underlying action. McRae v. Jackson, 526 P.2d 1190, 1192 (Utah 1974). We therefore decline to adopt an independent tort of third-party spoliation on the facts of this case. Whether I would adopt a tort of third-party spoliation under different facts remains an open question.