Cache La Poudre Feeds, LLC v. Land O'Lakes, Inc.
- Court
- District Court, D. Colorado (Federal district court)
- Decided
- 2007
- Citation
- 244 F.R.D. 614 (D. Colo. 2007)
- Standard applied
- When the common-law duty to preserve attaches
What the court held
The duty to preserve requires more than a mere possibility of litigation: an equivocal expression of discontent that did not produce a lawsuit for nearly two years did not trigger it. On these facts the duty attached when the complaint was filed, so the request for sanctions based on earlier conduct was denied. The court also held that the duty, once triggered, extends to the employees likely to have relevant information — the key players.
Why
The court accepted that the obligation can arise before suit where a party has notice that litigation is likely, but held that notice must rest on something firmer than a complaint letter followed by continued negotiation. It emphasised that the absence of a preservation letter does not excuse an adverse party's independent obligation, and that the duty is active rather than passive once it exists.
Our reading — not the court’s words
Why this matters in practice
Cache La Poudre is the counterweight to the preservation cases, and the one to reach for when a client is accused of spoliation for conduct predating any real dispute. The line it draws — genuine anticipation of litigation, not mere friction — is where the trigger fight actually happens, and the evidence that decides it is correspondence and internal records rather than forensic artefacts. It also states the key-player rule that departing-employee preservation failures are measured against.
This paragraph is Legal Cyber Academy’s editorial assessment of the decision’s practical importance. The court said none of it. For what the court actually said, read the opinion.
Additional detail
Tags: duty to preserve · trigger date · key players · preservation letter
Cited 79times in CourtListener’s corpus at the time this entry was compiled. Treat it as a rough measure of influence, not of correctness.
Other decisions on spoliation & sanctions and discovery & imaging
- Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc.District Court, D. Maryland · 2010After finding a sustained pattern of deletion, use of wiping software, and failure to preserve devices, the court granted the sanctions motion in part: it recom…
- Goodman v. Praxair Services, Inc.District Court, D. Maryland · 2009The court found a breach of the duty to preserve relevant e-mail and documents and imposed a permissive adverse-inference instruction — one allowing but not req…
- Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC (Zubulake V)District Court, S.D. New York · 2004The court imposed sanctions on UBS for failing to preserve and produce relevant e-mail, including an adverse-inference instruction as to messages deleted after…
- Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of America Securities, LLCDistrict Court, S.D. New York · 2010The court found that several plaintiffs had failed to issue written litigation holds or to preserve and collect relevant records, and imposed graduated sanction…
- Klipsch Group, Inc. v. ePRO E-Commerce Ltd.Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit · 2018The Second Circuit affirmed monetary discovery sanctions equal to the costs the opposing party reasonably incurred in remedying the sanctioned party's non-compl…
- Reinsdorf v. Skechers U.S.A., Inc.District Court, C.D. California · 2013The court declined to reopen discovery or impose sanctions, finding that the defendants had not improperly withheld or destroyed relevant evidence. The plaintif…
Summarised from the opinion as retrieved from CourtListener. Reference material, not legal advice. Back to the repository.