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WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
SPOILER ALERT - The camera doesn’t lie—unless, of course, you destroy key portions of the surveillance footage. Spoliation rulings in state and federal courts across the country over the past year demonstrate the harsh consequences for defendants who fail to preserve video evidence in slip-and-fall cases—and for plaintiffs who fail to properly raise the issue of spoliation prior to trial. As we explore in this week’s Law.com Litigation Trendspotter column, state and federal courts in Pennsylvania and Texas have come down hard in recent months on defendants who were deemed to have spoliated surveillance video in injury cases, issuing sanctions that would allow juries to drawn an adverse inference based on the missing evidence. But at least one appellate court has demonstrated that serious ramifications also await plaintiffs who break with procedure in lodging spoliation allegations.
