Court Opinion

ID: 9709234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:43:22.352176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:47.145691
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HEIPLE, dissenting: This case is before us on interlocutory appeal from the trial court for the sole purpose of answering a single certified question, namely: "Whether a plaintiff in a spoliation of evidence case must plead and prove that he lost the underlying civil case, or whether it is sufficient that he plead a significant impairment of his ability to prove the underlying suit?” Answering that certified question was all that we were asked to do. Nothing more, nothing less. The appellate court wisely declined to accept this interlocutory appeal. For reasons unclear to me, this court decided to take the case. We should have declined. If, however, the question were to be answered at all, the question, having been asked in the abstract, should have been answered in the abstract. In that respect, a two word answer would have sufficed: "It depends.” Instead, the majority delves heavily into the facts and the pleadings, takes off on a discussion of whether spoliation of evidence is a tort, passes on the trial court’s rulings on the pleadings, and suggests joinder and concurrent trials with respect to the plaintiffs’ separate claims against the Coleman Company and the Travelers Insurance Company. These are answers for which there are no questions. If, as the majority opinion does, we are to delve into the pleadings in this case, we must take the facts of the complaint as true. What those facts make clear is that the missing space heater is not mere evidence. It is the only evidence that the plaintiffs would have had against the Coleman Company. The plaintiffs were injured when a space heater blew up. That evidence is now missing. Without examining and testing that space heater, there is no possibility whatever that the plaintiffs could sustain an action against its manufacturer because of an alleged defect. The heater may have been perfect in every way. It- may have been an accident waiting to happen. No one will ever know. It is gone. Gone with it is the plaintiffs’ case against its manufacturer, the Coleman Company. Thus, there is no point in the majority’s requirement that the plaintiffs go through a trial against the Coleman Company, the result of which would be foreordained. To the extent that there is a claim here at all, it is against the party who borrowed the heater from the plaintiffs. That is the Travelers Insurance Company. Travelers borrowed it for testing. Travelers knew it had blown up. Travelers knew the plaintiffs were injured by it. Travelers knew or should have known that, if it were defective, it would be the plaintiffs’ only piece of causative evidence against the Coleman Company. A bailment was created. Travelers became the bailee of this heater. But it was not an ordinary bailment. The bailee insurance company entered into it charged with a full appreciation of the significance of the bailed item. Travelers knew that if the bailed item were not returned, the plaintiffs’ case would be lost. Travelers’ exposure, thus, is significantly more than buying the plaintiffs a new space heater. Similarly, there is no point in the majority’s requirement that plaintiffs, in their action against Travelers, demonstrate that they had a reasonable probability of succeeding in their underlying claim against Coleman. Since the bailee neither tested nor returned the heater, we will never know whether the heater was defective in fact. Had the plaintiffs been able to prove that the heater was defective, they would have recovered against the manufacturer. Had that proof not been forthcoming, the manufacturer would have prevailed. Under the circumstances, the only just result is to presume that the heater was defective and to assign the burden of its loss to the most culpable party. The loss cannot be assigned to the Coleman Company since it has been deprived of the opportunity to establish that the heater was not defective. The loss cannot be assigned to the plaintiffs since the plaintiffs have been deprived of the opportunity to establish that a defect in the heater caused their injuries. The loss, in fairness and justice, must be assigned to the bailee who entered into the bailment with full knowledge of the importance of the evidence that was taken and who then, without any justification, failed to return it. Thus, the only necessary trial in this case is a trial against the bailee, Travelers Insurance Company, on a presumption that the heater was defective and that the loss of the heater deprived the plaintiffs of their lawsuit against the Coleman Company. The only issue which needs to be tried is the issue of damages. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent. JUSTICE HARRISON joins in this dissent.