Extract from Doug Austin’s article “Court Grants Adverse Inference Sanction Against Target for Failing to Preserve Surveillance Video: eDiscovery Case Law”
In Decker v. Target Corp., No. 1:16-cv-00171-JNP-BCW (D. Utah Oct. 10, 2018), Utah District Judge Jill N. Parrish granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ for a finding of spoliation and for sanctions, granting the plaintiffs’ request for sanctions for failing to preserve more of the video surveillance footage of the plaintiff’s trip and fall accident, but denied the plaintiffs’ request for sanctions for failing to preserve training records and the store’s safety statistics and records for 2015.
Case Background
In this trip and fall dispute where the plaintiff tripped on a flatbed stocking cart and fell onto the floor (suffering serious injury that required transport from Target by ambulance) in December 2015, two defendant employees reviewed video surveillance footage of the incident and created a copy of the portions of the video that included the plaintiff in the frame. The defendant employees did not save any other portions of the video. The unsaved portions of the footage were later automatically overwritten by the defendant’s system, which only maintains video surveillance footage for approximately fifteen to twenty-five days.
