Legal Field:Civil Litigation

Focus Area:Litigation Holds

Case:Stinson v. City of New York, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 868(S.D.N.Y. Jan. 2, 2016).

FACTS:

Stinsoninvolved a request for sanctions against a defendant for spoliation caused by defendants' allegedly negligent preservation efforts. Plaintiffs requested an Adverse Inference Sanction which was granted. However, the court determined that the proof provided by Plaintiffs only established gross negligence and not bad faith on the part of the defendants. Thus, the judge in this case chose to issue a less severe jury instruction than the one originally requested by Plaintiffs and instead instructed the jury only that theymay, at their discretion, infer that the lost data would be been helpful in deciding the issue at hand.

The case was decided in 2016 under the old version of FRCP 37(e).

QUESTION:

Do you think a court applying the revised version of FRCP 37(e) would have reached the same holding as the court inStinsonand given the same jury instructionusing the identical facts?

Explain fully.