Court Holds Plaintiff Not Entitled To Summary Judgment Based On Spoliation: Jahmir Frank suffers from a permanent and debilitating brain injury. Believing that Good Samaritan caused his injury during his birth, Frank sued Good Samaritan for medical malpractice in state court. During litigation, Frank learned that Cintas—a Good Samaritan contractor—had stored his birth records improperly and destroyed them prematurely, leaving only outdated and unreadable fetal monitoring strips.
Because Good Samaritan’s contractor destroyed his medical records, Frank’s claim was arguably more difficult to prove. The district court denied Frank’s motion for spoliation sanctions and granted summary judgment for Good Samaritan. Frank appealed.
Federal Appellate Court Opinion
In its opinion filed on March 15, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (“Federal Appellate Court”) stated: “To establish spoliation, a party must prove: (1) “the party having control over the evidence had an obligation to preserve it at the time it was destroyed”; (2) the party that destroyed the evidence acted with a “culpable state of mind”; and (3) the evidence was relevant to a claim or defense. Id. (citation omitted). The severity of spoliation sanctions varies widely, and district courts possess wide discretion to tailor the sanction based on the degree of culpability attributed to the culpable party … Exercising that discretion, courts typically impose harsh sanctions only on those with culpability greater than negligence.”
The Federal Court held: “The district court was correct. First of all, Cintas—not Good Samaritan—destroyed Frank’s medical records. And the record indicated it did so as the result of improper storage, not malice. What’s more, the destruction occurred four years before Frank first requested his records and six years before he filed his first lawsuit. That timeline hardly suggests a coverup. After all, if Cintas didn’t even know Frank was eventually going to sue, how could it have known what evidence he would need, let alone intentionally destroy it? … In the face of these facts, Frank must show that (1) Good Samaritan should have prevented Cintas from destroying his records, and (2) Good Samaritan’s failure to do so justifies the gravest of all sanctions, summary judgment. He hasn’t come close to carrying that burden. Frank asserted that Good Samaritan recklessly failed to instruct Cintas properly. But Frank didn’t develop any evidence of Good Samaritan’s alleged recklessness before the district court, and, in turn, he couldn’t cite any evidence to us. He could have, for instance, deposed Good Samaritan and Cintas workers to attempt to show Good Samaritan told Cintas to destroy the records or produced documents in which Good Samaritan instructed Cintas to store them improperly. He didn’t. That left him with a bald assertion of recklessness, devoid of record support. So the district court correctly denied Frank’s motion for this extremely harsh sanction.”
“In sum, the district court didn’t abuse its discretion in denying Frank’s motion for spoliation sanctions. Frank asked only for the most extreme spoliation sanction available, yet he didn’t provide evidence of the level of culpability needed to justify it. And though he now tries to reconstrue his motion, he didn’t request any more proportionate measures, even as alternatives.”
Source Frank v. Good Samaritan Hospital, Case No. 21-3795.
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