Court Opinion

ID: 9490512
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:45:30.360565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:08.478417
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the result reached and much of the reasoning of the Court’s opinion. But I do not agree with the pre-fihng/post-filing distinction made by the Court or its failure to make explicit the limitations on right of access claims.
In 1986, in the same kind of auto accident case as this one (involving the cover-up of evidence by a police chief of his son’s negligence), a unanimous court held:
The First Amendment aecess-to-the-courts claim does not state a cause of action either. The plaintiff has the right under state law to file her damage suit and to offer proof about the accident and the al*1265leged destruction of relevant evidence. If she is able to prove that the police chiefs son and his confederates undertook to destroy evidence of the son’s negligence as a driver, there is no reason to believe that an Ohio court and jury would be unavailable and would not do justice between the parties. Rather than having denied access, the defendants have opened themselves to punitive damages and converted a small claims matter into a significant ease, albeit not a federal case.
Joyce v. Mavromatis, 783 F.2d 56 (6th Cir.1986). The court in Joyce did not make the case turn on whether the state court lawsuit had already been filed or not, and the court’s opinion treats this distinction as irrelevant. It treats it as irrelevant because if a state court is able to deal adequately with cover-up activities that occur after an action has been filed, the state court is equally able to deal with such activities that occur before the action is filed. A potential plaintiff is no less likely to receive adequate relief in state court merely because her allegations of a cover-up are placed in her initial complaint rather than in a motion or other pleading following the initiation of the case.
The standard for a “right-of-access-to-the-courts” claim, whether treated under the First Amendment as part of the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” or as a procedural due process claim, should require that the plaintiff allege and prove that the state’s judicial process does not provide fair procedures to remedy the wrong alleged. Proof of the lack of adequate state remedies is required by Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984), and Vicory v. Walton, 721 F.2d 1062 (6th Cir.1983), in procedural due process eases and should be required in judicial access eases. It seems elementary that the federal right of access to the courts is not abridged when the state courts remain just as open to provide a remedy as the federal courts.
A concealment of evidence that would merely toll the running of the state statute of limitations or give rise to a state action for “spoliation of evidence”1 does not “deny access” to state courts. There must be an allegation and then a showing that the doors of the state courthouse have been closed by the defendant’s action or that the state court remedy has been rendered ineffective. We should not simply displace the normal state court remedies for spoliation or concealment of evidence or obstruction of state judicial proceedings with a new, expanded, loosely worded, federal constitutional tort under § 1983. Right of access to the courts claims under the federal constitution should be reserved for situations in which adequate state remedies are made unavailable and should not include mere claims of interference with evidence.

. In Smith v. Howard Johnson Company, Inc., 67 Ohio St.3d 28, 615 N.E.2d 1037, 1038 (1993), a United States District Court certified to the Supreme Court of Ohio a list of questions concerning the existence of the tort of "intentional or negligent spoliation of evidence and/or tortious interference with prospective civil litigation." The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously answered the questions as follows:
We answer the three questions as follows: (1) a cause of action exists in tort for interference with or destruction of evidence; (2a) the elements of a claim for interference with or destruction of evidence are (1) pending or probable litigation involving the plaintiff, (2) knowledge on the part of defendant that litigation exists or is probable, (3) willful destruction of evidence by defendant designed to disrupt plaintiff's case, (4) disruption of the plaintiff's case, and (5) damages proximately caused by the defendant’s acts; (2b) such a claim should be recognized between the parties to the primary action and against third parties; and (3) such a claim may be brought at the same time as the primary action.
Although the instant case comes from Michigan rather than Ohio, there is no suggestion that Michigan would not provide a remedy in tort for the wrong alleged here.