Court Opinion

ID: 9710590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:12:40.340126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:58.169636
License: Public Domain

STATON, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion of the majority. However, I write separately to express that I would limit the Insurance Company’s or any third party’s duty to maintain evidence to instances where the third party has actual notice of the underlying litigation and that the evidence in its possession is relevant to the litigation.8 This notice would give rise to the “special relationship” necessary to impose such a duty. See Murphy v. Target Products, 580 N.E.2d 687, 688-89 (holding that a special relationship or duty arising by way of an agreement, contract, statute, independent tort, or other special circumstance is required before a duty to preserve evidence will be imposed in Indiana). In this ease, it is clear that the Insurance Company was on notice that the evidence in its possession was important to a pending lawsuit. The Thomp-sons’ suit against the Owensbys was filed on July 30, 1992. In May of 1993, the complaint was amended to add the Whitises and Orrville Leather, Inc. as defendants. This chronology makes it clear that the Insurance Company, involved in the suit on behalf of the Whitises, knew of the suit involving the restraining cable before it took possession of the restraint. This is enough to establish a duty on the part of Indiana Insurance to maintain the evidence.
However, in cases where litigation involving the evidence in the third party’s possession is speculative, I would hold that there is no duty for the third party to maintain the evidence until it is put on notice that the evidence should be maintained.9 This places *141a burden on the plaintiff, or the potential plaintiff, to be aware of who has possession of the relevant evidence. If the plaintiff is pursuing or expects to pursue a lawsuit based on the evidence in question, it will be up to him to inform the third party in possession of the evidence of his intent. As the plaintiff is the party responsible for putting on a case, he would be the appropriate person to carry the burden of knowing who has possession of the evidence and putting that party on notice that the evidence must be preserved. After a third party receives notice that the evidence in its possession is relevant to present or future litigation, a special relationship has been established, and the third party would then have a duty to maintain the evidence in its possession.
We should not impose a duty on third parties to store evidence indefinitely, just in case an underlying suit might be filed. It is also too much to require a third party to calculate the statute of limitations for a potential lawsuit, so that the third party will know when it is safe to throw out evidence that could be relevant. Too, we should not require a third party to speculate about which items in its possession might be important to a potential suit. Therefore, I would hold that the duty to maintain evidence should be imposed on a third party only when that third party has actual notice that a suit on the underlying injury has been filed, and that the material in its possession is relevant evidence. Accordingly, I concur.

. This category would include insurance companies who take possession of evidence in order to investigate claims against their insureds. As the majority recognizes, such insurance companies are presumed to have actual notice that the evidence will be relevant to underlying litigation in the event the claim is denied.

.For instance, if the suit against the manufacturer of the restraining cable had not yet been filed, and the Thompsons had not informed the Insurance Company that such a suit was being contemplated, the Insurance Company would not have known that the restraining cable would be *141relevant to an underlying lawsuit. Under those facts, there would be no duty to maintain the evidence for use in the potential suit against the restraint’s manufacturer. However, the Insur-anee Company would still be under a duty to maintain the evidence until the claim against its insured was settled, whether by payment of the claim or through litigation.