Loss of Documents Due to Eviction Defeats Request for Dismissal Due to Spoliation

Covington v. Union Memorial Hospital, 2024 WL 3784539 (D. Md. Aug. 13, 2024)(Chasanow, J.), presented a factually detailed claim of discrimination with ten counts.  The opinion fills 38 pages.  This blog addresses only one spoliation issue.

Defendants moved to dismiss based on spoliation. Id. at *6.  The opinion may not explicitly state whether the allegedly spoliated information was ESI or hard copy.  However, because the decision does not rely on Fed.R.Civ.P. 37(e), it appears to address loss of hard copy documents.

The loss was undisputed.  The Court wrote that: “Plaintiff admitted that he lost, misplaced, or destroyed relevant, discoverable material since initiating the litigation.”  Id. (emphasis added).[1]

However:

In response to Defendants’ motion to compel, Plaintiff stated that he had not produced certain documents because “[a] lot of financial and other documents/records were lost/damaged and/or inadvertently discarded between summer 2020 and the fall of 2021 covid shutdown and my eviction force move June and July of 2023.” (ECF No. 39, at 2; see also ECF No. 73-20, at 3 (“[A] lot of my documents and a lot of my records and through my transition what I have provided to your law firm has been either misplaced and lost or — or scattered throughout storages and family.”)).

Id. at *7 (emphasis added).

The Court wrote that a party seeking spoliation sanctions must prove that:

(1) the party having control over the evidence had an obligation to preserve it when it was destroyed or altered; (2) the destruction or loss was accompanied by a culpable state of mind; and (3) the evidence that was destroyed or altered was relevant to the claims or defenses of the party that sought the discovery of the spoliated evidence, to the extent that a reasonable factfinder could conclude that the lost evidence would have supported the claims or defenses of the party that sought it.

Id. (citations omitted).

The Covington Court then held that dismissal was not appropriate:

Even if Plaintiff breached his duty to preserve evidence, Defendants have not demonstrated that Plaintiff did so with a culpable state of mind. To the contrary, Plaintiff’s statements that evidence was lost when he was evicted and put his belongings in storage indicate that the loss was not purposeful. Consequently, Defendants’ motion to dismiss based on fraud or spoliation of evidence will be denied. [emphasis added].

Defendants’ cross-motion for summary judgment was granted on the merits.  Therefore, denial of defendants’ request for sanctions appears unimportant to the ultimate outcome.

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[1] The Covington Court wrote that “Plaintiff’s duty to preserve evidence arose when he filed a charge of discrimination against Defendants on December 13, 2020.”  Id. at *7.