In Heagy v. Burlington Stores, Inc., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157151 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 6, 2023) the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied Defendant store’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, which sought punitive damages in a slip and fall case. The case arose from an August 1, 2019 incident in which the Plaintiff entered the Defendant’s store and slipped and fell on a mat. About ten minutes before the Plaintiff fell, an employee of the store also slipped and fell on the same mat. The parties agreed that the mat on which Plaintiff fell was soaking wet at the time of the fall.
Exactly two weeks after the fall occurred, Plaintiff’s counsel sent a letter to the Defendant store requesting the preservation of surveillance video of the incident. Plaintiff’s counsel requested the entire unedited video for a 24-hour period before and a 24-hour period after the incident. In the same request, counsel further advised that destruction of the video would be considered spoliation of evidence.
A week after receiving the letter from Plaintiff’s counsel, the investigating adjuster for the defendant store’s third-party administrator advised Plaintiff’s counsel that 48 hours of footage could not be provided, but assured counsel that the footage would be preserved. Two days prior to this correspondence, the investigating adjuster directed the store to burn surveillance footage capturing 30 minutes before and after the subject slip and fall. This left a collection of footage showing Plaintiff for just 3 minutes before and just 17 minutes after the fall.
The Court ultimately decided that the defendant store was liable for spoliation of evidence through its mishandling of the surveillance footage. In reaching its decision, the Court noted that slip and fall incidents follow predictable patterns, which leave defendants expectant of litigation soon after an incident occurs. Here, Plaintiffs’ counsel unequivocally requested for preservation of the entire unedited video, provided a requested timeline, and advised that failure to preserve would be considered spoliation. According to the Court, the letter should have immediately prompted the store to preserve any potentially relevant evidence within the 48-hour time period.
The surveillance footage evidence could have proved crucial to resolution of several issues like how, when and by whom the hazardous condition was created. Therefore, the Court concluded that the defendant store was liable for spoliating evidence because there were no facts to support an inference that its failure to preserve the requested footage was result of an inadvertence, routine practice, or accident.
The Court also denied Defendant store’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment. All arguments regarding sanctions for spoliation were considered premature because no trial date had been set and the parties had not submitted proposed jury instructions. The Court granted the parties leave to file appropriate motions for sanctions near the time of trial.
It is clear from this opinion that Courts will consider the evidentiary value of video surveillance footage in slip and fall cases to determine the issue of spoliation. This decision also makes clear and reaffirms that defendants using surveillance systems have a duty to preserve and produce footage in the course of expected litigation.
