Jones v. Riot Hospitality Group LLC
- Court
- Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Federal circuit court)
- Decided
- 2024
- Citation
- 95 F.4th 730 (9th Cir. 2024)
- Standard applied
- FRCP 37(e)(2) — intent to deprive; FRE 702 for the spoliation expert
What the court held
The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a Title VII action under Rule 37(e)(2) where the plaintiff deleted text messages and coordinated with witnesses to delete theirs. It held that intent under the rule means wilful destruction for the purpose of avoiding discovery, may be proved by circumstantial evidence, and that Rule 37(e)(2) requires no separate finding of prejudice. It also upheld the orders directing the plaintiff and non-party witnesses to surrender their phones to a jointly retained forensic specialist, and the admission of his report without a Daubert hearing.
Why
On intent, the court pointed to selective deletion alongside preserved contemporaneous messages, the acquisition of new phones just after the imaging order, and a surviving screenshot of a deleted message bearing directly on the case. On the expert, it held a Daubert hearing is not always required and found the methodology sound — comparing message volumes between phone pairs over time and looking for digital artefacts of deletion — notwithstanding the examiner's acknowledgement that no industry standard for that analysis exists. On the imaging orders, it located device-privacy concerns within Rule 26(b) proportionality and Rule 26(c) protective orders, and found the orders adequately limited by stipulated search terms and a privilege review.
“Because intent can rarely be shown directly, a district court may consider circumstantial evidence in determining whether a party acted with the intent required for Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions.”
Our reading — not the court’s words
Why this matters in practice
This is the most useful modern authority for a practitioner because it decides three things at once: what proves intent, when a court will order a neutral examination of a party's and even a non-party's phone, and what a spoliation expert must show to be heard. The holding that the absence of an industry standard did not defeat reliability is a significant point for mobile-forensics work, and the conditions the court approved — joint retention, stipulated search terms, privilege review before production — read as a template for drafting an imaging order rather than opposing one.
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: text messages · forensic imaging order · mobile forensics · Rule 37(e)(2)
Cited 50times 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 and expert admissibility
- 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…
- United States v. UlbrichtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit · 2017The Second Circuit affirmed the exclusion of both of the defendant's proposed expert witnesses in the Silk Road prosecution because his expert notices were unti…
- 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…
Summarised from the opinion as retrieved from CourtListener. Reference material, not legal advice. Back to the repository.