Brookshire Bros., Ltd. v. Aldridge - 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014)

Rule:

A spoliation analysis involves a two-step judicial process: (1) the trial court must determine, as a question of law, whether a party spoliated evidence, and (2) if spoliation occurred, the court must assess an appropriate remedy. To conclude that a party spoliated evidence, the court must find that (1) the spoliating party had a duty to reasonably preserve evidence, and (2) the party intentionally or negligently breached that duty by failing to do so. Spoliation findings—and their related sanctions—are to be determined by the trial judge, outside the presence of the jury, in order to avoid unfairly prejudicing the jury by the presentation of evidence that is unrelated to the facts underlying the lawsuit. Accordingly, evidence bearing directly upon whether a party has spoliated evidence is not to be presented to the jury except insofar as it relates to the substance of the lawsuit. Upon a finding of spoliation, the trial court has broad discretion to impose a remedy that, as with any discovery sanction, must be proportionate; that is, it must relate directly to the conduct giving rise to the sanction and may not be excessive. Key considerations in imposing a remedy are the level of culpability of the spoliating party and the degree of prejudice, if any, suffered by the nonspoliating party.

Facts:

On September 2, 2004, Jerry Aldridge slipped and fell near a display table at a Brookshire Brothers grocery store. At the time of the fall, Aldridge did not tell store employees that he was injured, and the store did not investigate the fall or complete an incident report. However, about an hour-and-a-half after leaving the store, Aldridge went to the emergency room because of pain. On September 7, Aldridge returned to the store and reported his injuries. Jon Tyler, a store manager trainee, prepared an incident report based on Aldridge's statements and the recollections of the assistant manager who was on duty at the time of Aldridge's fall. The incident report stated that "Aldridge slipped on grease that had leaked out of a container by the 'Grab N Go.'" Aldridge's fall was captured by a surveillance camera mounted near the check-out counters. Because of the camera's placement, the floor where Aldridge fell was in the background and was obscured by a display table, which was covered with a cloth that extended to the floor. At the time of the fall, the cameras recorded surveillance video in a continuous loop that, after approximately thirty days, recorded over prior events. After Aldridge reported his injuries to Brookshire Brothers, Robert Gilmer, Brookshire Brothers' Vice President of Human Resources and Risk Management, decided to retain and copy approximately eight minutes of the video, starting just before Aldridge entered the store and concluding shortly after his fall. Aldridge learned that Brookshire Brothers possessed video footage of the incident and, on September 13, asked the claims department for a copy so he could see his fall. Gilmer testified that he instructed the claims department not to provide the tape to Aldridge, as Gilmer believed it would be improper. The claims department wrote Aldridge a letter on September 29 stating that there was only one copy of the video at that time and that it therefore could not provide him with a copy. The camera presumably recorded over the September 2 footage by early October. Brookshire Brothers initially paid Aldridge's medical expenses, but ceased paying by June 2005, when Gilmer wrote Aldridge a letter stating that he had reviewed the video and determined that Brookshire Brothers was going to deny responsibility. In August 2005, Aldridge's attorney sent Brookshire Brothers a letter requesting approximately two-and-a-half hours of additional footage from the store cameras. Brookshire Brothers was unable to comply with that request because the footage had been recorded over almost a year earlier. Aldridge sued Brookshire Brothers, claiming injuries from a slip and fall under a premises-liability theory. Aldridge argued in the trial court that Brookshire Brothers' failure to preserve additional video footage amounted to spoliation of evidence that would have been helpful to the key issue of whether the spill was on the floor long enough to give Brookshire Brothers a reasonable opportunity to discover it. Aldridge accordingly moved for a spoliation jury instruction. The jury determined that Brookshire Brothers' negligence proximately caused Aldridge's fall and awarded Aldridge $1,063,664.99 in damages. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment on the verdict, holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of spoliation or charging the jury with the spoliation instruction.

Issue:

Was the submission of a spoliation instruction in any form an abuse of discretion?

Answer:

Yes.

Conclusion:

In its ruling, the court explained that in this slip-and-fall premises-liability action, the spoliation analysis involved a two-step judicial process: (1) the trial court must determine, as a question of law, whether a party spoliated evidence, and (2) if spoliation occurred, the court must assess an appropriate remedy. To conclude that a party spoliated evidence, the court must find that (1) the spoliating party had a duty to reasonably preserve evidence, and (2) the party intentionally or negligently breached that duty by failing to do so. The court held that the submission of a spoliation instruction in any form was an abuse of discretion because, assuming that the grocery store had and breached a duty to reasonably preserve evidence by saving an insufficient amount of video footage, prejudicing the customer, there was no evidence that it did so with the requisite intent to conceal or destroy relevant evidence.