Court Opinion

ID: 9414644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 15:01:06.18784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:54.529970
License: Public Domain

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                                                                [PUBLISH]
                                      In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                          For the Eleventh Circuit

                            ____________________

                                   No. 21-13850
                            ____________________

        SKANSKA USA CIVIL SOUTHEAST INC.
        AND SKANSKA USA, INC.,
        as owners of the Barge KS 5531 praying for
        exoneration from or limitation of liability,
                                                       Petitioner-Appellant,
        versus
        BAGELHEADS, INC.,
        FLOWERS BY YOKO,
        GULF BREEZE BAIT & TACKLE, INC.
        DOG HOUSE DELI II, INC.
        JLO, INC., et al.,

                                                       Claimants-Appellees.
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                21-13850

                             ____________________

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Northern District of Florida
                     D.C. Docket No. 3:20-cv-05980-LC-HTC
                            ____________________

                             ____________________

                                   No. 22-10203
                             ____________________

        SKANSKA USA CIVIL SOUTHEAST INC. AND
        SKANSKA USA, INC.,
        As owners of the Barge KS 5531
        praying for exoneration from or limitation of liability,
                                                       Petitioner-Appellant,
        versus
        BAGELHEADS, INC.,
        FLOWERS BY YOKO,
        GULF BREEZE BAIT & TACKLE INC,
        DOG HOUSE DELI II INC,
        JLO INC, et al.,

                                                       Claimants-Appellees.
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        21-13850                   Opinion of the Court                          3

                                ____________________

                    Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Northern District of Florida
                      D.C. Docket No. 3:20-cv-05980-LC-HTC
                             ____________________

        Before BRANCH, GRANT, Circuit Judges, and SCHLESINGER,* District
        Judge.
        GRANT, Circuit Judge:
               Hurricane Sally hit Pensacola Bay with a vengeance in
        September 2020, and 28 barges moored in the Bay were not spared.
        The barges slammed around the Bay after their moorings snapped,
        leading to significant damage—including to the Pensacola Bay
        Bridge, which was closed for months. Skanska, the construction
        company that owned the barges (and was working on replacing the
        Bay Bridge) faced hundreds of potential lawsuits. Some were
        directly related to property damage, but most were economic loss
        claims from nearby businesses that lost customers during the
        months-long closure of the bridge.
                Skanska filed what are called petitions for limitation of
        liability, one for each of its 28 barges. These petitions invoked the
        Limitation Act, a federal law that allows the owner of a maritime
        vessel to limit its damages in a negligence suit to the combined

        * The Honorable Harvey E. Schlesinger, United States District Judge for the

        Middle District of Florida, sitting by designation.
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                 21-13850

        value of the vessel and its cargo—but only where the owner has
        neither privity nor knowledge of the negligent acts at issue. After
        extensive discovery and a bench trial, the district court decided that
        Skanska could not limit its liability because its own corporate
        officials were responsible for the negligent acts that led to the
        barges getting loose in the storm. And once it decided that no
        limitation of damages could apply, it dismissed the Limitation Act
        petitions—freeing the claimants to pursue litigation in state court.
               Skanska says the district court acted too fast, because the
        Limitation Act entitles it to more than a decision on limitation of
        damages (the denial of which it does not contest). It claims that the
        Limitation Act required the district court to decide whether it was
        liable to each and every claimant and only then to determine
        whether it had a right to limit that liability. Here, it says, that
        would have meant dismissing the economic loss claims because it
        had no duty as the owner of the barges to prevent that sort of
        indirect damage.
               Skanska’s approach would turn the Limitation Act on its
        head, and our precedents have already rejected it. We have been
        clear that the purpose of the Act is limitation, not exoneration. And
        the statute’s text is equally clear—we see no mandate to enforce
        the two-step process that the company insists is necessary. The
        Limitation Act allows a federal court to take over all negligence
        claims to preserve the vessel owner’s right to limit its liability and
        then proportionally distribute the available assets to the successful
        claimants. But only to the extent necessary to protect the right to
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        21-13850                Opinion of the Court                           5

        limitation; it does not create an independent right to have the full
        merits of each individual claim decided in federal court when no
        limitation is available.
                Skanska also disputes several of the district court’s other
        decisions, including multiple evidentiary rulings, the conclusion
        that it committed negligent acts when it left the barges in the Bay,
        and the imposition of spoliation sanctions for the destruction of
        cellphone data. Here too we disagree. We see no reversible error
        in the district court’s evidentiary rulings, its findings of fact, or its
        spoliation sanctions. We therefore affirm the district court.
                                           I.
                                           A.
               Pensacola is a city in the westernmost part of the Florida
        panhandle. It is known for its access to beaches, which attract both
        locals and tourists from across the country. But Pensacola Bay
        separates the actual city of Pensacola from the area’s major
        beaches (and from several smaller towns such as Gulf Breeze).
        Pensacola remains connected to its beaches thanks to the Pensacola
        Bay Bridge—a roughly three-mile bridge across the Bay that has
        existed in some form since the 1930s.
               Around 2010, the bridge needed replacing. Skanska USA
        Civil Southeast Inc.—which is wholly owned by Skanska USA,
        Inc.—won a contract to build two new spans and then to destroy
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        6                         Opinion of the Court                      21-13850

        the old bridge. 1 Those tasks required construction barges—lots of
        them. Skanska had a hurricane preparedness plan for the project.
        If winds of 58 miles per hour or greater were expected within the
        next 72 hours, the plan called for the construction barges to be
        moved to Butcherpen Cove on the south side of the Bay, a process
        that would take at least 30 hours.
               The ﬁrst major warning sign of Hurricane Sally came on
        Thursday, September 10, 2020, ﬁve days before Skanska’s barges
        began to break loose. That’s when the National Hurricane Center
        issued its notice of a potential storm. Skanska had 55 barges
        working on the project, and the record does not show that anyone
        at Skanska was yet aware of the notice. The next day, the National
        Hurricane Center issued Advisory 1 about what it then called
        “Tropical Depression 19.” Though it projected that the storm
        would most likely land at the border between Louisiana and
        Mississippi, Pensacola Bay fell in the possible 5-day path. Still no
        sign that Skanska was aware of the storm.
              By Saturday morning, that had changed. The National
        Hurricane Center’s 72-hour report showed a 16% chance that
        winds of 58 miles per hour or greater would reach Naval Air

        1 The district court sat in admiralty and made findings of fact after a bench

        trial. “When reviewing the judgment of a district judge sitting in admiralty
        with no jury, we may not set aside the court’s findings of fact unless they are
        clearly erroneous.” Dresdner Bank AG v. M/V Olympia Voyager, 446 F.3d 1377,
        1380 (11th Cir. 2006). So—other than those findings of fact that Skanska
        challenges, which we review for clear error—we take all of the district court’s
        findings of fact as true.
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        21-13850               Opinion of the Court                          7

        Station Pensacola (a few miles west of the bridge) by Tuesday.
        Skanska decisionmakers conferenced on Saturday afternoon. By
        that point, the storm had been upgraded to Tropical Storm Sally
        and forecasters thought it would be a hurricane by Monday
        evening. The storm was still projected to make landfall near the
        Louisiana-Mississippi border—but Pensacola Bay remained on the
        outskirts of the storm’s three-day probable path. Skanska
        management decided to begin preparations to move and secure the
        barges if necessary. But—in part because of logistical issues with
        moving the barges over the weekend—the group largely took a
        “wait and see” approach and agreed to meet again the next
        morning.
               By then, Sunday, the National Hurricane Center had issued
        a tropical storm warning for the panhandle coast. The 72-hour
        forecast was slightly better than it had been on Saturday, but it still
        showed a 9% chance that winds of 58 miles per hour or greater
        would hit Naval Air Station Pensacola by Wednesday. Skanska
        began moving its barges, but decided not to take them all the way
        to Butcherpen Cove. Instead, it moored the barges to various pipe
        pilings in the Bay—generally within 500 feet of the bridge. Most,
        but not all, of the barges were tied down by Monday morning,
        which is also when Tropical Storm Sally was upgraded to
        Hurricane Sally and the Governor of Florida issued a State of
        Emergency for the greater Pensacola area. By Monday afternoon,
        Pensacola Bay was squarely within the hurricane warning zone.
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        8                         Opinion of the Court                       21-13850

               On Tuesday morning, Naval Air Station Pensacola reported
        winds from 15–26 miles per hour, with gusts reaching almost 45
        miles per hour. Skanska’s barges began to break loose in the Bay,
        and multiple barges crashed into the bridge. At ﬁrst, Skanska tried
        to secure its unmoored barges, but by Tuesday evening it was too
        dangerous to continue the recovery attempts. On Wednesday,
        when Hurricane Sally passed through the Bay, it brought winds
        from 47 to 74 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 92 miles per
        hour—causing even more barges to slip their moorings. In the end,
        28 barges came loose, slamming into the bridge and other property
        along the Bay’s edge.2 The bridge was closed to traﬃc for many
        months because of the damage. This dramatically increased the
        amount of time it took to get between Pensacola and the towns
        and beaches on the other side of the Bay.
                                              B.
                In short order, Skanska found itself facing state-court
        lawsuits—many lawsuits—about the damage caused by its barges.
        Seeking both to limit its liability and to consolidate the multiplying
        claims in a single forum, Skanska initiated proceedings in federal
        district court under the Limitation Act. The core of that Act is
        relatively simple: when a vessel causes “loss, damage, or injury by

        2 The district court mentioned 27 barges that broke loose.         But Skanska
        initiated Limitation Act proceedings for 28 barges, and on appeal, both parties
        refer to 28 barges as having broken loose. We adopt the parties’
        characterization that 28 barges broke loose for clarity, but we do not hold one
        way or the other whether the district court’s finding that 27 barges broke loose
        was erroneous.
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        21-13850                Opinion of the Court                           9

        collision” without the vessel owner’s “privity or knowledge,” the
        owner’s liability is limited to the value of the vessel and its pending
        freight. 46 U.S.C. § 30523.
                To initiate a limitation proceeding, a vessel owner brings a
        civil action and deposits the value of the vessel and its freight with
        the district court. Id. § 30529; Fed. R. Civ. P. Supp. Admiralty &
        Mar. Claims (Supplemental Rules) F(1), F(2), F(9). This creates a
        single equitable proceeding about the damage caused by the vessel.
        All other litigation about the incident—whether in state or federal
        court—must “cease.” 46 U.S.C. § 30529(c); Supplemental Rule
        F(3); Beiswenger Enters. Corp. v. Carletta, 86 F.3d 1032, 1036 (11th Cir.
        1996). At the same time, those injured by the vessel retain rights
        under the “saving to suitors” clause. 28 U.S.C. § 1333. That clause,
        which accompanied the original grant of admiralty jurisdiction to
        federal district courts, ensures that federal admiralty jurisdiction
        does not eliminate traditional remedies, including state jury trials.
        Lewis v. Lewis & Clark Marine, Inc., 531 U.S. 438, 443–46, 453–55
        (2001).
               Between December 2020 and March 2021, Skanska ﬁled 28
        petitions for exoneration or limitation of liability—one for each
        barge that broke loose during the storm. Following Skanska’s
        unopposed motion, all 28 proceedings were consolidated. 3 The
        consolidated proceedings followed standard Limitation Act

        3 Twenty-two of the proceedings were consolidated in an order on February

        15. The remaining six proceedings were filed on March 26 and were treated
        as part of the consolidated proceeding.
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 21-13850

        procedure: Skanska deposited the value of each of the barges with
        the district court, initiating a Limitation Act proceeding for each
        barge, and the court enjoined the ﬁling or prosecution of all related
        proceedings in other courts. Parties alleging that they had suﬀered
        harm from the loose barges then ﬁled claims in the consolidated
        proceeding, generally with “reservation of rights to proceed in
        state court.”
               Some of these claims came from people and entities whose
        property was directly damaged by the barges—the United States,
        for example, alleged that multiple barges caused millions of dollars
        of damage when they allided with property at Naval Air Station
        Pensacola. But most of the ﬁlings came from businesses claiming
        not direct physical damage, but economic loss suﬀered after the
        closure of the Pensacola Bay Bridge. As an example, the top-line
        plaintiﬀ here is Bagelheads, Inc., a bagel shop immediately next to
        the bridge on the Pensacola side. It says it suﬀered more than
        $90,000 in damages from the bridge outage because the dramatic
        increase in travel time from Pensacola to the beach and to the
        residential towns on the other side of the bridge cut the shop’s sales
        by 35%. And Bagelheads was not alone—hundreds of similar
        claims followed. Skanska moved to dismiss these claims from the
        limitation proceeding, arguing that it owed no duty to any party
        whose property did not suﬀer direct physical damage from the
        barges.
              The district court entered a scheduling order setting a
        deadline for claimants to join the proceeding and directing all
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        21-13850               Opinion of the Court                        11

        claimants to join in two amended master complaints—one for
        direct property damage and one for economic damage arising from
        the bridge outage. The court also announced a bifurcated bench
        trial. First, the court would consider whether Skanska was entitled
        to limitation of liability. That involved deciding whether the
        accident was caused by any negligent acts and, if so, whether
        Skanska had privity or knowledge of the negligence. Next—but
        only if that ﬁrst inquiry showed that Skanska had a right to limit its
        liability—the parties would conduct damages discovery and the
        court would schedule any necessary further proceedings. Neither
        Skanska nor the claimants objected to this scheduling order.
               In the end, over 1,000 claimants joined the proceedings—
        more than 900 of whom alleged economic loss damages from the
        bridge outage. After the window closed for new ﬁlings, Skanska
        renewed its motion to dismiss the economic loss claims. The court
        deferred consideration of that issue, in part to better protect the
        claimants’ right to litigate in the forums of their choice if Skanska
        were denied limitation.
                During discovery, Skanska sought evidence about the
        claimants’ storm preparations, including extensive discovery from
        the United States Navy about steps it had taken at the nearby naval
        air station. A magistrate judge handling pretrial issues held that the
        Navy’s preparations were of minimal relevance because it operated
        seagoing vessels (not barges) and that Skanska’s discovery of the
        Navy was not proportional to the needs of the case. See Fed. R. Civ.
        P. 26(b). Despite that discovery order, Skanska requested
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        12                     Opinion of the Court                 21-13850

        depositions from ﬁfteen individuals under the control of the
        United States Navy, and the magistrate judge granted the Navy a
        protective order.
                After discovery, the district court conducted a ﬁve-day bench
        trial on two issues: Skanska’s negligence and Skanska’s right to
        limit its liability. Yet again, an evidentiary dispute arose. Skanska
        examined a tugboat captain who had two barges moored to a
        wharf in Pensacola Bay during Hurricane Sally, with the court
        repeatedly warning Skanska’s counsel that his questions about the
        captain’s personal experience up to and during the hurricane were
        mostly irrelevant and directing him to get to the point. After about
        14 minutes, the court dismissed the captain, but Skanska was
        allowed to proﬀer the rest of his testimony, which showed that the
        captain would have testiﬁed about his experience with storms and
        about his decision to moor his barges in Pensacola Bay during
        Hurricane Sally.
               The district court ultimately concluded that Skanska had
        acted negligently. It began with “the Louisiana rule,” which creates
        a rebuttable presumption that a vessel is negligent when it collides
        with a stationary object. See In re Skanska USA Civil Se. Inc., 577 F.
        Supp. 3d 1302, 1313–14 (N.D. Fla. 2021) (citing Bunge Corp. v.
        Freeport Marine Repair, Inc., 240 F.3d 919, 923 (11th Cir. 2001)); The
        Louisiana, 70 U.S. (3 Wall.) 164, 173 (1866). The court rejected
        Skanska’s assertion that it was “caught oﬀ guard” by the storm and
        found that Butcherpen Cove would have been a safer place to moor
        the barges. 577 F. Supp. 3d at 1314–18. The “only surprise” to
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        21-13850               Opinion of the Court                        13

        Skanska, the court said, “was that its unreasonable choice to
        discount—or even ignore—the clear warnings of an approaching
        tropical storm turned out to have harsh consequences.” Id. at 1322.
               The court quickly rejected Skanska’s “perfunctory”
        argument that it lacked privity or knowledge of the negligent acts,
        pointing out that those acts “sprung wholly from executive
        decision-making that resulted in the failure to take reasonable
        measures to protect its barges from the impending storm.” Id. at
        1324. It then dismissed Skanska’s petitions for exoneration from or
        limitation of liability and dissolved the injunction barring
        prosecution of all related litigation. Id. The court never ruled on
        Skanska’s motion to dismiss the economic loss claims.
                                         C.
                Along with the adverse verdict, Skanska was sanctioned for
        spoliating electronic evidence under Rule 37(e); the data from ﬁve
        out of thirteen discovery custodians’ cell phones was destroyed.
        Even with an active litigation hold and actual litigation, Skanska did
        not back up the relevant employees’ cell phones. Nor did it suspend
        its ordinary cell phone data destruction policies.
               Two phones were deliberately reset according to Skanska’s
        ordinary employee departure procedures when their owners left
        the company. Another was somehow “disabled” and became
        inaccessible after the owner left Skanska. Yet another was allegedly
        lost overboard. And still another had all text messages deleted
        under disputed circumstances.
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        14                        Opinion of the Court                      21-13850

               The district court ruled that Skanska “acted with the intent
        to deprive” the claimants of the cell phone data and sanctioned the
        company under Rule 37(e)(2). 4 The court emphasized that it saw
        no cogent explanation, apart from bad faith, for Skanska’s
        systematic failure to make any eﬀort to preserve cell phone data
        until at least seven months after the litigation hold was (technically)
        in place. So it made two adverse inferences against Skanska and
        ordered it to pay the claimants’ costs and attorneys’ fees for the
        sanctions motion.
                Skanska appeals both the district court’s ﬁnal judgment and
        its sanctions order, and we consolidated the appeals. Skanska also
        moved to stay the dissolution of the district court’s injunction
        pending appeal to prevent the lawsuits from proceeding against it
        in state court, but we denied its request.
                                              II.
                We begin by addressing Skanska’s core argument—that the
        district court violated the Limitation Act by failing to ﬁrst
        adjudicate the full merits of the claims before deciding whether its
        liability could be limited. In particular, we consider Skanska’s
        argument that it was entitled to have the economic loss claims
        dismissed, which would have barred the claimants from bringing

        4 The claimants’ spoliation motion was referred to a magistrate judge, who

        issued the opinion sanctioning Skanska. But the district court denied Skanska’s
        objections to the order and “wholly concur[red]” with the magistrate judge,
        so we refer to the magistrate judge’s order as coming from the district court
        for clarity.
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        21-13850                    Opinion of the Court                                 15

        those claims in another forum. We review questions of law about
        the scope of the Limitation Act de novo. See Dresdner Bank AG v.
        M/V Olympia Voyager, 446 F.3d 1377, 1381 (11th Cir. 2006). And we
        review the district court’s decision to dismiss the entire Limitation
        Act proceeding for abuse of discretion. See Lewis, 531 U.S. at 454.
                                                A.
               The Limitation Act is a diﬃcult statute. It was written in
        1851 to address economic realities that are unrecognizable today. 5
        Lewis, 531 U.S. at 446–47. And it was “badly drafted even by the
        standards of the time.” Id. at 447 (quoting 2 T. Schoenbaum,
        Admiralty and Maritime Law 299 (2d ed. 1994)). Of course, that does
        not change this Court’s job—we apply the law as it exists, no matter
        how poorly it may have aged. But, keenly aware of the
        inscrutability of this statute, we oﬀer relevant background about
        the basic history and substance of the Act (and its implementing
        rules), the petitioner’s ability to demand exoneration, the

        5  Nearly fifty years ago, our predecessor Court referred to the Act as
        “hopelessly anachronistic”—largely because it was a creative way to limit
        liability “in an era before the corporation, with its limited shareholder liability,
        had become the standard form of business organization and before the present
        range of insurance protection was available.” Univ. of Tex. Med. Branch at
        Galveston v. United States, 557 F.2d 438, 441, 454 (5th Cir. 1977). It also quoted
        a leading 1950s admiralty treatise that said the Act “has been due for a general
        overhaul for the past seventy-five years.” Id. at 441 & n.3 (quoting Grant
        Gilmore & Charles L. Black, Jr., The Law of Admiralty 677 (1st ed. 1957)). If
        Gilmore and Black were right, then we are at 141 years and counting.
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        16                        Opinion of the Court                      21-13850

        injunction against ongoing litigation, and the Act’s relationship
        with the equally mysterious saving to suitors clause.
                First, the history. In 1851, Congress thought the American
        shipping industry was disadvantaged as compared to its foreign
        competitors. See Lewis, 531 U.S. at 446–47. Unlike their
        counterparts in England, American courts did not limit the
        potential liability of vessel owners. See generally Joseph C. Sweeney,
        Limitation of Shipowner Liability: Its American Roots and Some
        Problems Particular to Collision, 32 J. Mar. L. & Com. 241, 243–52
        (2001). Congress stepped in, enacting the Limitation Act “to
        encourage ship-building and to induce capitalists to invest money
        in this branch of industry.” Lewis, 531 U.S. at 446 (quoting Norwich
        Co. v. Wright, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 104, 121 (1872)). To that end, the
        Act limits a vessel owner’s liability for any “loss, damage, or injury
        by collision . . . done, occasioned, or incurred, without the privity
        or knowledge of the owner.” 46 U.S.C. § 30523(b). 6 And
        “consistent with the statutory purpose to protect innocent
        investors, ‘privity or knowledge’ generally refers to the vessel
        owner’s personal participation in, or actual knowledge of, the
        speciﬁc acts of negligence or conditions of unseaworthiness which
        caused or contributed to the accident.” Suzuki of Orange Park, Inc.

        6 While this appeal has been pending, Congress restructured and renumbered

        the codified Limitation Act and limited the extent to which the Act applies to
        certain small passenger vessels. James M. Inhofe National Defense
        Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, Pub. L. No. 117–263, § 11503, 136 Stat.
        2395, 4130–31 (2022).
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        21-13850                   Opinion of the Court                                 17

        v. Shubert, 86 F.3d 1060, 1064 (11th Cir. 1996). 7 In other words, the
        Act limits the liability of vessel owners who were not in some sense
        responsible for the speciﬁc negligent acts or conditions of
        unseaworthiness that caused the accident. Id.
               If a vessel owner is entitled to limitation, then its liability is
        limited to the post-accident value of the vessel and its pending
        freight. 46 U.S.C. § 30523(a); Tug Allie–B, Inc. v. United States, 273
        F.3d 936, 939 (11th Cir. 2001). That means that the owner’s total
        loss—its liability plus the loss from the accident itself—will be no
        greater than the value of the vessel and its cargo. The Act also
        recognizes that multiple would-be plaintiﬀs might need to share in
        these limited funds, so it provides that—if the funds are insuﬃcient
        to pay all claims—injured parties will be “paid in proportion to
        their respective losses.” 46 U.S.C. § 30525(1).
               When courts ﬁrst began to apply the Limitation Act, they
        encountered a major problem: it had no procedures. In the
        Supreme Court’s ﬁrst case about the Act, the Court observed that
        it was “reduced to the dilemma of inferring that the legislature has

        7 Linguistically, the idea of a vessel owner having “privity or knowledge” of

        specific “negligent acts” is a little awkward; ordinarily, one thinks of privity as
        being with actors, not of acts. But the meaning of this clause can be clarified
        by thinking about the archetypical case of limitation: a nineteenth century
        shipowner whose ship was thousands of miles away, completely outside of his
        control, when the crew unexpectedly acted negligently. In such cases, the
        vessel owner might be in a formal sense in privity with the negligent actors,
        but would not be thought to have had “privity or knowledge” of the crew’s
        specific negligent acts.
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        18                     Opinion of the Court                  21-13850

        passed a law which is incapable of execution.” Norwich, 80 U.S. (13
        Wall.) at 123. So the Court took matters into its own hands,
        promulgating rules of admiralty to implement the Act. Lewis, 531
        U.S. at 447 (citing Supplementary Rules of Practice in Admiralty, 80
        U.S. (13 Wall.) xii–xiv (1872)). A vessel owner seeking limitation of
        liability would deposit the value of his interest in the vessel and its
        freight before the court. Id. Then, the district court would order
        all claimants to appear. Id. If the vessel owner was entitled to
        limitation, the court would distribute the limited fund among the
        claimants. Id. at 448.
              Congress eventually codiﬁed the basic bond posting
        procedure for the Limitation Act, and the Supreme Court over time
        has amended and restyled the limitation rules. See 46 U.S.C
        § 30529; Supplemental Rule F. But the same basic structure
        remains, and the Act’s procedures are still primarily implemented
        by court rule rather than statute.
                One of those procedures is the injunction against existing
        litigation. When a Limitation Act petition is ﬁled, the district court
        enjoins the prosecution of all pending litigation that overlaps with
        the subject matter of that petition. 46 U.S.C. § 30529(c);
        Supplemental Rule F(3). A pause in other litigation about the
        incident is necessary to protect the limitation fund—after all, the
        plaintiﬀs’ combined damages may well exceed the value of the
        vessel and its cargo. But if one or more plaintiﬀs received ﬁnal
        judgments in other litigation that exceeded this value, then the
        vessel owner’s right to limit its liability would be meaningless.
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        21-13850                Opinion of the Court                          19

        Here, the injunction stopped lawsuits like the one the bagel shop
        ﬁled in Florida state court—but only while the limitation petitions
        were pending. Skanska’s objection is that the district court
        dissolved the injunction and allowed the lawsuits to proceed.
                Finally, we discuss the complicated relationship between the
        Limitation Act and the saving to suitors clause. See 28 U.S.C.
        § 1333. That clause falls not in the Limitation Act, but in the
        general grant of admiralty jurisdiction to the federal district courts.
        Id. It gives federal district courts “original jurisdiction, exclusive of
        the courts of the States” of any “civil case of admiralty or maritime
        jurisdiction.” Id. But it does so while “saving to suitors in all cases
        all other remedies to which they are otherwise entitled.” Id. Both
        this grant of federal jurisdiction and the clause’s corresponding
        protection of suitors have existed in some form since the Judiciary
        Act of 1789. Lewis, 531 U.S. at 443–44 (citing Judiciary Act of 1789,
        ch. 20, § 9, 1 Stat. 73, 77). The Supreme Court has “theorized that
        the saving to suitors clause was ‘inserted, probably, from abundant
        caution,’” so that the grant of admiralty jurisdiction was not
        wrongly understood to eliminate “‘the concurrent remedy which
        had before existed’”—state tort lawsuits. Id. at 444 (quoting N.J.
        Steam Navigation Co. v. Merchs.’ Bank of Bos., 47 U.S. (6 How.) 344,
        390 (1848)). This clause, then, makes it clear that the existence of
        federal admiralty jurisdiction (which oﬀers no jury right) does not
        generally keep plaintiﬀs from seeking relief in other forums—
        perhaps forums that do oﬀer a jury trial. See id. at 445–46, 454–55;
        see also, e.g., Suzuki, 86 F.3d at 1063.
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        20                     Opinion of the Court                  21-13850

                Make no mistake—“tension exists between the saving to
        suitors clause and the Limitation Act.” Lewis, 531 U.S. at 448. The
        former protects the right to a jury trial. Id. at 445–46, 454–55. The
        latter creates a proceeding with no jury trial and stays all litigation
        in any other forum—including where a jury trial would be
        available. Id. at 448. In light of these somewhat contradictory
        provisions, the district court is charged with safeguarding a vessel
        owner’s right to have the question of limitation adjudicated in
        federal court while simultaneously ensuring that claimants retain
        their choice of forum under the saving to suitors clause.
                 Both this Court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly
        grappled with this interplay. See, e.g., Oﬀshore of the Palm Beaches,
        Inc. v. Lynch, 741 F.3d 1251, 1257–59 (11th Cir. 2014); Lewis, 531 U.S.
        at 448–56; Suzuki, 86 F.3d at 1063–64; Beiswenger, 86 F.3d at 1036–
        40; Lake Tankers Corp. v. Henn, 354 U.S. 147, 150–54 (1957); Langnes
        v. Green, 282 U.S. 531, 541–44 (1931). At least a few clear principles
        have emerged. To start, a vessel owner has an “absolute right to
        claim the Act’s liability cap, and to reserve the adjudication of that
        right in the federal forum.” Beiswenger, 86 F.3d at 1037 (quotation
        omitted). This guarantee means that a primary duty of the
        limitation court is to ensure that outside lawsuits do not undermine
        its exclusive authority to decide limitation. And if that right to
        limitation cannot be adequately protected with other lawsuits
        proceeding elsewhere, the limitation court may adjudicate the
        merits of the entire controversy—which means deciding both
        liability and limitation. Lewis, 531 U.S. at 454. But if the right to
        litigate and enforce limitation in federal court is protected, the
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        21-13850                 Opinion of the Court                             21

        saving to suitors clause counsels in favor of giving plaintiﬀs their
        choice of forum. Id. at 454–55. In that case, the district court has
        “discretion to stay or dismiss Limitation Act proceedings to allow a
        suitor to pursue his claims in state court.” Id. at 454.
                                             B.
               With this background, we can address Skanska’s argument
        that the Limitation Act requires a federal court to decide whether
        it owed a duty to each and every claimant—or, to put it another
        way, Skanska’s argument that it had a right to be exonerated in
        federal court.
                 Skanska primarily leans on a two-step procedure that we
        have said is “typical” in a Limitation Act case: “First, the court must
        determine what acts of negligence or conditions of
        unseaworthiness caused the accident. Second, the court must
        determine whether the shipowner had knowledge or privity of
        those same acts of negligence or conditions of unseaworthiness.”
        Beiswenger, 86 F.3d at 1036 (quoting Hercules Carriers, Inc. v. Florida,
        768 F.2d 1558, 1563–64 (11th Cir. 1985)); see also, e.g., Farrell Lines,
        Inc. v. Jones, 530 F.2d 7, 10 (5th Cir. 1976); Hartford Accident & Indem.
        Co. v. S. Pac. Co., 273 U.S. 207, 214–15 (1927); Providence & N.Y. S.S.
        Co. v. Hill Mfg. Co., 109 U.S. 578, 595 (1883). 8 Skanska reads these
        cases as creating a mandatory order of decision for nearly all
        Limitation Act cases. And, in Skanska’s telling, that mandatory ﬁrst

        8 All published cases of the former Fifth Circuit decided before the close of

        business on September 30, 1981, are precedent in this Circuit. See Bonner v.
        City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1207 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc).
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        22                          Opinion of the Court                         21-13850

        step includes a decision on every element of negligence—duty,
        breach, injury, and actual and proximate cause—for every claimant.
        So, Skanska claims, the district court violated this order of decision
        by reaching the question of privity and knowledge before fully
        adjudicating its liability to each claimant.
               This Court has already rejected Skanska’s rigid reliance on
        the “typical” Limitation Act procedure. We have held that if it is
        “impossible under any set of circumstances for the vessel owner to
        demonstrate the absence of privity or knowledge,” then “the
        admiralty court may decide the privity or knowledge issue without
        ﬁrst deciding the liability issue.” Suzuki, 86 F.3d at 1064. Although
        Suzuki articulated a summary judgment standard, the same basic
        principle logically applies at every stage of the proceedings,
        including after a trial. 9 Once it is apparent that the vessel owner
        cannot establish a lack of privity or knowledge, then limitation is
        not at issue. And if limitation is not at issue, then “the basis for
        granting exoneration vanishes.” Id. (quoting Fecht v. Makowski, 406
        F.2d 721, 723 (5th Cir. 1969)). So whenever the court ﬁnds that the
        vessel owner cannot establish a lack of privity or knowledge, it is
        appropriate to dismiss the petition to protect the claimants’ rights
        under the saving to suitors clause—even if that means forgoing (in
        part or in entirety) a decision on the vessel owner’s liability.

        9 The district court declined to apply Suzuki at summary judgment, holding

        that it was still possible at that point in the litigation for Skanska to show a lack
        of privity or knowledge. But clearly, after trial, the court determined that
        Skanska could not meet its burden to show a lack of privity or knowledge.
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        21-13850                   Opinion of the Court                                 23

                This is consistent with decades of Limitation Act law about
        claimants’ saving to suitors clause rights. The Act does “not create
        a freestanding right to exoneration from liability in circumstances
        where limitation of liability is not at issue.” Lewis, 531 U.S. at 453.
        It is about limitation of liability, not immunity from liability or the
        exclusivity of the federal forum. Lake Tankers, 354 U.S. at 152–53.
        Courts should thus “give eﬀect to both the Limitation Act and the
        saving to suitors clause whenever possible” and “damage claimants
        must be allowed to litigate the vessel owner’s negligence in state
        court, ‘where it is apparent that limitation cannot be granted.’”
        Beiswenger, 86 F.3d at 1037; Suzuki, 86 F.3d at 1063 (quoting Fecht,
        406 F.2d at 722). 10
               Here, Skanska’s “perfunctory” claim that it lacked privity or
        knowledge straightforwardly failed (indeed, Skanska did not even
        appeal the district court’s ﬁnding that the company had privity or
        knowledge). After all, the decision not to move the barges to safety
        was made by Skanska executives, and when a corporation owns a
        vessel, “the privity and knowledge of corporate managers vested
        with discretionary authority is attributed to the corporation.”
        Suzuki, 86 F.3d at 1065 (quotation omitted). Once it was clear that
        Skanska had privity or knowledge of any negligent acts that caused

        10 Skanska claims that Beiswenger identifies the only instances in which district

        courts may depart from the two-step Limitation Act procedure. But
        Beiswenger did not attempt to identify every scenario where procedural
        flexibility is appropriate. To the contrary, we read Beiswenger as blessing
        procedural creativity by district courts in order to give effect to both the clause
        and the Limitation Act “whenever possible.” See 86 F.3d at 1037.
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        24                        Opinion of the Court                      21-13850

        the barges to damage property, it was equally clear that the
        company had no right to limit its liability. So there was no
        continued need for a limitation proceeding. The district court thus
        did not abuse its discretion by dismissing the consolidated
        proceedings.11
               While we can resolve this case on precedent alone, the text
        of both the Limitation Act and its rules point in the same direction.
        The operative provisions of the Limitation Act do not mention
        exoneration. See 46 U.S.C. §§ 30501–30530. The only source of
        positive law that even plausibly supports Skanska’s argument is
        Rule F’s statement that a vessel owner “may demand exoneration
        from as well as limitation of liability.” Supplemental Rule F(2). But
        this argument misses the mark. The rule’s history clariﬁes its
        narrow scope. The limitation rules’ exoneration language was
        added to clarify that, unlike under the “very onerous” English rules,
        an American vessel owner did not need to concede liability in order

        11 The parties dispute, for what it is worth, whether the district court even

        departed from the two-step procedure. Although the court did not determine
        every element of negligence for every claimant, it did decide that Skanska’s
        negligence in not moving the barges to Butcherpen Cove caused the damage
        to the bridge and other property struck by the barges. The claimants argue
        that this finding was enough to show what “acts of negligence caused the
        accident,” satisfying the first step of the two-step procedure, while Skanska
        argues that nothing short of a full adjudication of every element of negligence
        for every individual claimant will do. But we think that this debate misses the
        point; it does not matter whether the district court followed the ordinary two-
        step procedure. All that matters is that Skanska’s right to have limitation
        adjudicated in federal court was protected—and it was.
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        21-13850                  Opinion of the Court                              25

        to seek limitation of liability. Lewis, 531 U.S. at 447–48 (quotation
        omitted). In light of this history, we see no reason to think that this
        language does anything more than preserve the right to contest
        liability while also seeking limitation; it certainly does not “create
        a freestanding right to exoneration from liability in circumstances
        where limitation of liability is not at issue.” Id. at 453.
               Even if there were evidence that Rule F somehow expanded
        vessel owners’ rights to a federal forum, we would not be able to
        read it that way. Judicially promulgated rules cannot “abridge,
        enlarge or modify any substantive right.” 28 U.S.C. § 2072; see also
        In re Tidewater Inc., 249 F.3d 342, 347 (5th Cir. 2001) (rejecting an
        aggressive reading of Rule F on this ground). Any tension between
        the judicially adopted rules and the congressionally enacted saving
        to suitors clause must be resolved in the clause’s favor. No matter
        how Skanska frames its argument, it simply has no right to a
        federal forum beyond the question of limitation.12

        12 None of this is to say that the two-step approach articulated in many

        Limitation Act cases is obsolete. After all, it is an intuitive way to approach
        the problem. “Without negligence there can be no privity or knowledge,”
        because the vessel owner’s privity or knowledge must be of a particular
        negligent act. Farrell Lines Inc., 530 F.2d at 10 n.1 (quoting 3 Benedict on
        Admiralty, § 41, p. 5-5). So it makes sense that courts often decide negligence
        (either in part or in full) before deciding privity or knowledge. At the same
        time, courts should not overread our discussions of the “typical” Limitation
        Act case, including the occasional use of the word “must” when discussing the
        steps of that procedure. “The language of an opinion is not always to be
        parsed as though we were dealing with language of a statute.” Nat’l Pork
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        26                        Opinion of the Court                      21-13850

                As a last resort, Skanska points to dicta saying that the Act
        and its rules protect vessel owners from “being harassed by
        litigation in other tribunals” which could lead to the “subversion of
        the whole object and scheme of the statute.” Providence & N.Y. S.S.
        Co., 109 U.S. at 594–95; see also, e.g., Hartford, 273 U.S. at 215–16. But
        the Court has long-since abandoned this dicta. For example, in
        Lake Tankers, “the Court explicitly rejected the argument that the
        Limitation Act protects the vessel owner against a multiplicity of
        suits.” Beiswenger, 86 F.3d at 1039 (citing Lake Tankers, 354 U.S. at
        153–54). If limitation is not implicated, the Court noted, there is
        no reason why a vessel owner “should be treated any more
        favorably than an airline, bus, or railroad company.” Lake Tankers,
        354 U.S. at 153. To be sure, if Congress wishes to protect vessel
        owners from a multiplicity of suits, it can always expand the
        Limitation Act and contract the saving to suitors clause. But in the
        meantime, courts and litigants alike must respect the relationship
        between these laws.
               Neither Skanska’s appeals to procedure nor its gestures to
        policy sway our conclusion that the district court did not abuse its
        discretion in dismissing Skanska’s limitation petitions without fully
        addressing the question of Skanska’s liability. Yes, Skanska had the
        right to have the question of limitation adjudicated in federal court.
        And the question of limitation was adjudicated in federal court. But

        Producers Council v. Ross, 143 S. Ct. 1142, 1155 (2023) (alteration adopted and
        quotation omitted).
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        21-13850                   Opinion of the Court                                 27

        that is as far as it goes. Once the district court decided that Skanska
        was not entitled to limitation, it correctly dismissed the case so that
        the claimants could pursue remedies in whichever forums that
        they chose. 13
                                               III.
                 Skanska also challenges two evidentiary rulings: the order
        limiting its discovery of the Navy’s preparations during Hurricane
        Sally and the court’s mid-testimony dismissal of Captain Towne at
        trial. 14 “We review a district court’s evidentiary rulings for abuse
        of discretion.” Great Lakes Ins. SE v. Wave Cruiser LLC, 36 F.4th 1346,

        13 Skanska fleetingly briefs another procedural argument, saying that the

        district court violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(i) by failing to rule
        on its 12(b)(6) motion. If Skanska wished to argue that Rule 12(i) required the
        district court to address the motion to dismiss before the first phase of the
        bifurcated trial, then it needed to raise that issue before the first phase of the
        bifurcated trial. It did not do so, instead raising the issue for the first time in
        post-judgment motions. We review issues not timely raised before the district
        court only for plain error, and rarely in civil cases. See SEC v. Diversified Corp.
        Consulting Grp., 378 F.3d 1219, 1227 & n.14 (11th Cir. 2004). “Under the civil
        plain error standard, we will consider an issue not raised in the district court if
        it involves a pure question of law, and if refusal to consider it would result in
        a miscarriage of justice.” Burch v. P.J. Cheese, Inc., 861 F.3d 1338, 1352 (11th
        Cir. 2017) (quotation omitted). Refusing to consider this argument does not
        result in a miscarriage of justice, and we therefore do not consider it.
        14 Skanska says that the order denying discovery of the Navy led them to

        believe that the court would not allow discovery of other parties. It now
        argues that, because this constructively denied additional discovery, the entire
        discovery process was defective. But it goes without saying that Skanska
        cannot challenge a hypothetical ruling of the district court. We therefore
        review only the two specific evidentiary rulings that Skanska appeals.
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        28                       Opinion of the Court                    21-13850

        1353 (11th Cir. 2022). And “even a clearly erroneous evidentiary
        ruling will be aﬃrmed if harmless.” Id. (quotation omitted). An
        error is harmless unless “it aﬀects the substantial rights of the
        parties” such that the reviewing court cannot conﬁdently say that
        “the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error.” Furcron
        v. Mail Ctrs. Plus, LLC, 843 F.3d 1295, 1304 (11th Cir. 2016) (quotation
        omitted).
               Starting with the Navy, under Rule 26(b), parties may only
        obtain discovery that is both “relevant” and “proportional to the
        needs of the case.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). The magistrate judge’s
        discovery order limited discovery relating to the Navy because it
        was irrelevant and because it was not proportional. On appeal,
        Skanska only argues that its proposed discovery was relevant—it
        never explains why the burdens were proportional to the beneﬁts.
        Skanska has therefore forfeited any challenge to proportionality, so
        we aﬃrm. See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681
        (11th Cir. 2014). 15
                As for Captain Towne, the district court heard nearly ﬁfteen
        minutes of his testimony while repeatedly urging Skanska’s
        counsel to get to the point. It then considered the captain’s
        testimony via a one-sided proﬀer, and it explicitly stated that the
        full testimony would not have aﬀected its decision. Any exclusion

        15 Because we affirm the limitation of the discovery as non-proportional, we

        do not address whether the information Skanska sought was relevant.
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        21-13850                  Opinion of the Court                              29

        of relevant evidence that the captain might have oﬀered was
        harmless.
                                             IV.
               Moving to the factual basis for the district court’s ﬁnal
        judgment, Skanska challenges the ﬁnding that it did not exercise
        reasonable care.16 For maritime tort cases, “we rely on general
        principles of negligence law” and have consulted “in particular the
        Restatement (Second) of Torts” to discern these general principles.
        Tesoriero v. Carnival Corp., 965 F.3d 1170, 1178 (11th Cir. 2020)
        (quotations omitted). Whether the defendant’s conduct violated
        the standard of care is a question of fact. See Restatement (Second)
        of Torts § 328C cmt. b (Am. L. Inst. 1965). Because the district
        court sat in admiralty without a jury, we review its ﬁndings of fact
        for clear error. Dresdner Bank, 446 F.3d at 1380. A factual ﬁnding is
        clearly erroneous if “the entirety of the evidence leads the
        reviewing court to a deﬁnite and ﬁrm conviction that a mistake has
        been committed.” Id.
               The core of the district court’s analysis was simple: Under
        the Louisiana rule, Skanska bore the burden of disproving a
        presumption that it failed to exercise reasonable care. Throughout
        the weekend, the National Hurricane Center’s weather forecasts
        showed a 9–16% chance of 58 mile per hour or greater winds
        hitting Pensacola Bay. According to Skanska’s own hurricane

        16 We do not read the district court as having decided whether Skanska

        violated any duty to any particular claimant. So Skanska is still free to argue
        in state court that it did not owe a duty to the economic loss claimants.
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        30                    Opinion of the Court                21-13850

        preparedness plan, these wind speeds warranted moving the barges
        to Butcherpen Cove. Skanska’s inability to get its barges to
        Butcherpen Cove before high winds arrived was one of two things:
        a deliberate choice or the consequence of a failure to act more
        quickly. Either way, the court explained, Skanska left its barges in
        a less safe location than Butcherpen Cove—and its gamble
        backﬁred with disastrous consequences. Given the substantial
        damage that the barges could do to others if the wind unmoored
        them, the court found that a reasonable company facing a 9–16%
        chance of these winds would have moved the barges. Thus, the
        court held, Skanska acted unreasonably by leaving the barges by
        the bridge.
               This conclusion was not clearly erroneous. Skanska does
        not attempt to show that the district court’s ﬁnding that there was
        a 9–16% chance of high winds hitting the Bay was incorrect. Nor
        does it present us with evidence that a reasonable company would
        have left its barges by the bridge notwithstanding those odds of
        high winds. Indeed, it fails to engage with the factual ﬁndings of
        the lower court, instead repeating its arguments below about how
        its preferred weather reports did not show that a hurricane was
        more likely than not to hit Pensacola Bay until Monday morning
        (without ever suggesting exactly how likely the storm was to hit
        the Bay) and emphasizing the diﬃculty of moving the barges over
        the weekend. This argument is non-responsive to the district
        court’s ﬁnding that reasonable care required Skanska to take
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        21-13850                   Opinion of the Court                                31

        precautions even with a 9–16% chance of high winds in the Bay.
        Skanska has failed to show reversible error.17
                                               V.
                Finally, Skanska challenges spoliation sanctions it received
        under Rule 37(e)(2) for the destruction of the data from ﬁve of its
        custodians’ cell phones. We review that decision for abuse of
        discretion. Tesoriero, 965 F.3d at 1177. In the spoliation context,
        this Court has often articulated our abuse of discretion review as
        asking whether the district court “has made a clear error of
        judgment, or has applied the wrong legal standard.” Mendez v. Wal-
        Mart Stores E., LP, 67 F.4th 1354, 1361 (11th Cir. 2023) (quotation
        omitted). But we see no diﬀerence between this formulation of the
        abuse of discretion standard and our articulations of that standard
        in other contexts. See, e.g., Callahan v. United Network for Organ
        Sharing, 17 F.4th 1356, 1360 (11th Cir. 2021) (“A district court abuses
        its discretion when it applies an incorrect legal standard, follows
        improper procedures in making the determination, makes ﬁndings
        of fact that are clearly erroneous, or commits a clear error of
        judgment.” (quotations omitted)). Accordingly, as is typical for this
        Court’s abuse of discretion review, we review the district court’s

        17 Relatedly, Skanska challenges the district court’s factual finding that its

        hurricane preparedness plan was triggered at all. But we agree with the district
        court that the core inquiry is “whether the decision to demobilize the barges
        near the bridge was reasonable,” making the question of whether Skanska’s
        plan was triggered largely beside the point. In re Skanska USA Civil Se. Inc., 577
        F. Supp. 3d at 1317. In any event, the court’s interpretation of the plan was
        not clear error.
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        32                     Opinion of the Court                 21-13850

        legal conclusions de novo and its subsidiary factual ﬁndings for
        clear error. Common Cause Ga. v. Georgia, 17 F.4th 102, 107 (11th Cir.
        2021). That means that we review the district court’s conclusion
        that Skanska acted in bad faith—a factual ﬁnding—for clear error.
        Cf. Mar. Mgmt., Inc. v. United States, 242 F.3d 1326, 1331 (11th Cir.
        2001).
                                         A.
               Spoliation sanctions are often imposed under the broad
        discretion of the district court, which has inherent power to
        “manage its own aﬀairs and to achieve the orderly and expeditious
        disposition of cases.” Flury v. Daimler Chrysler Corp., 427 F.3d 939,
        944 (11th Cir. 2005). But sometimes other sources of federal law
        provide more speciﬁc authority.
               Rule 37(e) from the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is one
        such example. It was adopted in 2006 and modiﬁed in 2015 in
        response to the explosion of electronic discovery. 2015 Committee
        Notes on Rule 37(e). The Rule seeks to balance the centrality of
        electronic information to modern litigation with the almost always
        substantial (and sometimes unnecessary) costs of preserving
        electronic data. Id.
               By its text, Rule 37(e) creates a two-tiered sanctions
        regime—with lesser sanctions under Rule 37(e)(1) and more severe
        sanctions under Rule 37(e)(2). Both parts of the rule share two
        preconditions: (1) “electronically stored information that should
        have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation”
        was “lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve
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        21-13850               Opinion of the Court                         33

        it” and (2) that information “cannot be restored or replaced
        through additional discovery.” The requirements diverge after that.
        Rule 37(e)(1) sanctions are centered on the eﬀect of a violation; they
        apply only where lost electronic evidence causes “prejudice to
        another party,” which then justiﬁes sanctions “no greater than
        necessary to cure the prejudice.” Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions, on the
        other hand, look more to the cause of the violation. They require
        a ﬁnding that “the party acted with the intent to deprive another
        party of the information’s use in the litigation.” If so, the court is
        justiﬁed in imposing more severe sanctions: adverse jury
        instructions, and even dismissal or default judgment. Fed. R. Civ.
        P. 37(e)(2). What’s more, Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions do not require
        “any further ﬁnding of prejudice.” 2015 Committee Notes on Rule
        37(e)(2). “This is because the ﬁnding of intent required by the
        subdivision can support not only an inference that the lost
        information was unfavorable to the party that intentionally
        destroyed it, but also an inference that the opposing party was
        prejudiced by the loss of information that would have favored its
        position.” Id.
                This is the ﬁrst time we have had reason to thoroughly
        consider Rule 37(e)(2). In previous cases, we have suggested or
        assumed, but never held in a published opinion, that the Rule’s
        “intent to deprive” standard is the same as the “bad faith” standard
        our Court has used in other spoliation contexts. See ML Healthcare
        Servs., LLC v. Publix Super Mkts., Inc., 881 F.3d 1293, 1308 (11th Cir.
        2018); Ala. Aircraft Indus., Inc. v. Boeing Co., No. 20-11141, 2022 WL
        433457, at *15 (11th Cir. Feb. 14, 2022) (unpublished). Here, the
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        34                         Opinion of the Court                         21-13850

        district court and both parties have assumed that “intent to
        deprive” and “bad faith” are the same.
                We now explicitly agree: the “intent to deprive another party
        of the information’s use in the litigation” is the equivalent of bad
        faith in other spoliation contexts. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e)(2). In this
        Circuit’s spoliation precedents, bad faith “generally means
        destruction [of evidence] for the purpose of hiding adverse evidence.”
        Tesoriero, 965 F.3d at 1184 (emphasis added) (quotation omitted).
        This standard is more than mere negligence and aligns with both
        the text and advisory committee notes for Rule 37(e)(2). See id. at
        1184–86; Rule 37(e)(2); 2015 Committee Notes on Rule 37(e)(2).
        The phrase “intent to deprive” naturally requires that the spoliator
        has a “purpose of hiding adverse evidence” from other parties.
        And the advisory committee notes explain that “intent to deprive”
        is more than negligence or even gross negligence. 2015 Committee
        Notes on Rule 37(e)(2). So rather than adopt a new law of
        spoliation from scratch for Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions, we will borrow
        our identical and well-trodden standard of “bad faith.” See also
        EEOC v. Jetstream Ground Servs., Inc., 878 F.3d 960, 965–66 (10th Cir.
        2017) (conducting a similar analysis). 18

        18 We reject, however, the applicability of the so-called “Flury factors” to a Rule

        37(e) analysis. See Mendez, 67 F.4th at 1362 n.9 (recognizing that this question
        was unresolved). Flury was decided before Rule 37(e) was written, and that
        opinion borrowed from Georgia spoliation law because of a lack of federal
        Circuit precedent on the precise issue in that case and because the parties and
        the district court had relied upon Georgia law. See Flury, 427 F.3d at 944–45.
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        21-13850                   Opinion of the Court                                35

                                               B.
                We now review the district court’s imposition of Rule
        37(e)(2) sanctions. It is not entirely clear whether Skanska
        challenges Rule 37(e)’s ﬁrst requirement, that information that
        “should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of
        litigation” was “lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps
        to preserve it.” Skanska concedes that it was “probably negligent.”
        But it also seems to suggest in its briefs that its preservation failures
        could be excused because it may not have reasonably anticipated
        litigation.
                The facts reveal that argument’s folly. To start, within days
        of Hurricane Sally, Skanska’s in-house counsel had orally informed
        employees of an evidence retention policy. And about a month
        later, counsel sent a formal legal hold letter about the Pensacola
        Bay Bridge incident. Litigation started just a few weeks after that.
        But even with an active litigation hold—and then active litigation—
        Skanska did not back up its employees’ cell phones. Nor did it
        suspend its ordinary cell phone data destruction policies—not even

        But there is no reason to believe that Rule 37(e) borrows from Georgia
        spoliation law. And one of the Flury factors, prejudice to the defendant, is
        specifically disclaimed as a consideration for Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions by the
        Advisory Committee. See Flury, 427 F.3d at 945; 2015 Committee Notes on
        Rule 37(e)(2). So while we hold that the fourth Flury factor—bad faith—is the
        same as “intent to deprive,” courts should not look to the five Flury factors (or,
        for that matter, factors from other tests in different contexts) when
        interpreting Rule 37(e). The right things to consider are the rule’s text, the
        advisory committee notes, and our spoliation caselaw analyzing bad faith.
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        36                     Opinion of the Court                  21-13850

        for known electronic data custodians. It was, as we see it, entirely
        predictable that cell phone data would be needed for litigation, and
        that some of that data would be lost.
               Next, Skanska more directly challenges the applicability of
        Rule 37(e)’s second condition that the information could not have
        been “restored or replaced through additional discovery.” It argues
        that, because discovery of other Skanska employees included some
        of the text messages and because the claimants were able to depose
        the ﬁve custodians whose data was destroyed, nothing was actually
        lost.
               The district court was not moved; nor are we. While some
        of the lost text messages were discoverable through other Skanska
        employees’ text messages, others were not. And it should go
        without saying that deposing workers well after an event is not a
        perfect substitute for reviewing their contemporaneous text
        messages.
               Finally, Skanska challenges the district court’s ﬁnding that it
        acted in bad faith when it failed to back up the custodians’ text
        messages and suspend its destruction policies. The court found a
        “lack of any cogent explanation” for Skanska’s complete failure to
        make any eﬀort to preserve the destroyed cell phones. In re Skanska
        USA Civil Se. Inc., 340 F.R.D. 180, 189 (N.D. Fla. 2021). It focused in
        particular on how the company “took no action” to educate its
        custodians and administrators about the litigation hold and “made
        no eﬀort” to collect its custodians’ cell phone data until at least
        seven months after the litigation hold was in place. Id. at 188–89.
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        21-13850               Opinion of the Court                         37

        And it highlighted other egregious discovery behavior by Skanska,
        like its representation to the court that “no documents relating to
        Skanska’s storm preparations or eﬀorts has [sic] been deleted or
        destroyed”—a representation made before Skanska had even
        bothered to check if its custodians’ cell phone data was still
        available. Id. at 189 (alteration adopted and quotation omitted). In
        the district court’s view, bad faith was the only thing that explained
        the company’s actions.
               If our review were de novo, this would be a close question.
        On the one hand, we ﬁnd Skanska’s utter failure to implement even
        the most basic data-protection safeguards egregious—so egregious
        that an inference of bad faith is easy to make. On the other, this is
        not a case with direct evidence of bad faith; it is also plausible from
        this record that Skanska was “just” grossly negligent.
               But we review the district court’s ﬁnding of bad faith for
        clear error. And an inference of bad faith here was not clear error.
        Skanska can provide no reasonable explanation for its conduct
        other than to plead negligence. True enough, much of the
        evidence was destroyed through “routine” document destruction
        policies. But a hands-oﬀ implementation of an ordinary corporate
        destruction policy is not a silver bullet. We have already explained
        that we would be “highly skeptical” of a claim that evidence was
        unintentionally destroyed “pursuant to a routine policy” after a
        request that the evidence be preserved. Tesoriero, 965 F.3d at 1186.
        We will not second guess the district court’s skepticism in those
        very circumstances.
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        38                         Opinion of the Court                        21-13850

               Our conclusion is further conﬁrmed by the advisory
        committee notes to Rule 37(e). The reasonableness of evidence
        preservation eﬀorts depends in part on “the party’s sophistication
        with regard to litigation in evaluating preservation eﬀorts.” 2015
        Committee Notes on Rule 37(e). Skanska is a sophisticated
        entity—a multinational company tasked with completing a
        construction contract worth nearly $400 million. Skanska USA
        even boasts on its website that it is “one of the largest, most
        ﬁnancially sound construction and development companies in the
        U.S.” Even so, Skanska did not bother to take the most
        fundamental of precautions—starting with backing up the
        custodians’ cell phones and suspending its policy of wiping those
        phones. And the company is not being held liable for a failure of
        imagination—Skanska had an active litigation hold, but took no
        steps to implement it.
               Finally, Skanska argues that—as a per se rule—a ﬁnding of
        bad faith premised on circumstantial evidence requires an
        “aﬃrmative act” by the spoliating party. 19 But that argument ﬂouts
        both the text of Rule 37 and our bad-faith caselaw. As we have
        explained, the rule provides for sanctions when “electronically
        stored information that should have been preserved in the
        anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to

        19 In Skanska’s defense, the district court framed its inquiry into “bad faith” by

        applying a test that asked whether Skanska had committed an “affirmative
        act.” In re Skanska, 340 F.R.D. at 188. But we may affirm the court’s ultimate
        finding of bad faith on any ground supported by the record. In re Feshbach, 974
        F.3d 1320, 1328 (11th Cir. 2020).
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        21-13850               Opinion of the Court                        39

        take reasonable steps to preserve it.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e) (emphasis
        added). Failure to act can thus—by deﬁnition—be a violation of
        Rule 37.
                Our caselaw on spoliation also shows that failures to act can
        be just as harmful as aﬃrmative acts of destruction. In Flury, we
        aﬃrmed sanctions after the spoliating party “failed to preserve” a
        vehicle that the other party wished to inspect, “inexplicably
        ignored” requests for the location of the vehicle, and “allowed the
        vehicle to be sold for salvage without notiﬁcation to defendant of
        its planned removal.” 427 F.3d at 943, 947, 945. These are failures
        to act—not aﬃrmative actions. Even so, it “is no surprise that we
        found bad faith on those facts.” Tesoriero, 965 F.3d at 1185.
               So too here. Skanska’s passivity does not change the basic
        fact that the evidence was destroyed. Given that other
        circumstances pointed to a reasonable inference of bad faith by
        Skanska, it is irrelevant whether an act or a failure to act directly
        caused the spoliation. The court’s ﬁnding of bad faith thus was not
        clear error, and its imposition of Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions was not an
        abuse of discretion.
                                   *      *      *
               Under the Limitation Act, Skanska had a right to have the
        issue of limitation litigated by a federal court. That’s exactly what
        Skanska got. The claimants now have the right to determine where
        any subsequent litigation about the damage caused by Skanska’s
        barges during Hurricane Sally will occur. And Skanska has failed
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        40                    Opinion of the Court               21-13850

        to show any other reason why the district court’s dismissal of its
        petitions should be reversed.
              We AFFIRM both the district court’s dismissal of the
        Limitation Act proceedings and its sanctions order.