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FOURTH CIRCUIT RECOGNIZES FEDERAL LAW OF SPOLIATION
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court of Maryland’s dismissal of a personal injury claim against the defendant auto manufacturer on the grounds of spoliation of the evidence. The Court concluded that a federal law of spoliation applied because the power to sanction for spoliation derives from the inherent power of the court, not substantive law. However, the Court adopted the articulation of spoliation principles in part from New York law. Spoliation refers to the destruction or material alteration of evidence or to the failure to preserve property for another’s use as evidence in pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation. The right to impose sanctions for spoliation arises from the court’s inherent power to control the judicial process, and the underlying policy of preservation of the integrity of the judicial process in order to retain confidence that the process works to uncover the truth. In the Fourth Circuit’s view, while the spoliation of evidence may give rise to court imposed sanctions deriving from this inherent power, the acts of spoliation do not themselves give rise in civil cases to substantive claims or defenses. The District court has broad discretion in choosing an appropriate sanction for spoliation, but the applicable sanction should be molded to served the underlying rationales. A court must find some degree of fault to impose sanctions. The duty to preserve material evidence arises not only during litigation but also extends to that period before the litigation when a party reasonably should know that the evidence may be relevant to anticipated litigation. If a party cannot fulfill this duty to preserve because he does not own or control the evidence, he still has an obligation to give the opposing party notice of access to the evidence or of the possible destruction of the evidence. In this case, the plaintiff was injured while driving his landlady’s vehicle. Notwithstanding the anticipation of the litigation against GM, neither plaintiff’s attorney nor plaintiff took any steps to preserve the vehicle or to notify GM of the existence of the vehicle and the potential claim until almost three years later when suit was filed. The Fourth Circuit agreed that the spoliation here was highly prejudicial, and denied GM access to the only evidence from which it could develop its defenses adequately. |
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