Ashton v. Knight Transp. Inc.

• Decision Date: 22 February 2011
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 3:09–CV–0759–B.
• Citation: 772 F.Supp.2d 772
• Parties: Kelly L. ASHTON, Individually and as the Independent Executor of the Estate of Donald Ray Ashton, Deceased, Plaintiff,v.KNIGHT TRANSPORTATION, INC. and George M. Muthee, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

772 F.Supp.2d 772

Kelly L. ASHTON, Individually and as the Independent Executor of the Estate of Donald Ray Ashton, Deceased, Plaintiff,

v.KNIGHT TRANSPORTATION, INC. and George M. Muthee, Defendants.

Civil Action No. 3:09–CV–0759–B.

United States District Court, N.D. Texas, Dallas Division.

Feb. 22, 2011.

Michael F. Pezzulli, Christopher L. Barnes, Jack B. Krona, Pezzulli Kinser LLP, Dallas, TX, for Plaintiff.Michael P. Sharp, Daniel M. Karp, P. Wes Black, Rebecca E. Bell, Fee Smith Sharp & Vitullo LLP, Dallas, TX, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

JANE J. BOYLE, District Judge.

Before the Court is Plaintiff Kelly Ashton's Motion for Sanctions for Spoliation or for an Adverse–Inference Jury Instruction (“Motion for Sanctions”) (doc. 98), filed September 23, 2010. At issue is whether the Defendants destroyed or otherwise altered evidence they had a duty to preserve, and if so, the appropriate sanction for such conduct. For the reasons stated below, the Court GRANTS Plaintiff's Motion for Sanctions.

I.BACKGROUND ¹

A. Basic Facts

As set forth in previous filings of the Court, this action arises out of an automobile accident occurring in Republic County, Kansas on August 11, 2007. (Defs.' Mot. Summ. J. 1). Plaintiff Kelly Ashton, her husband Don Ashton, and friend William Helton were returning to Texas from South Dakota along U.S. Hwy. 81 in the Ashton's 2006 Hummer H3. ( Id.). While driving through Kansas, the Hummer was struck by a 1988 Chevrolet Camaro driven by Jacob Valek, a 15–year–old minor who, while under the influence of alcohol, had ignored a stop sign. Sometime during or soon after the collision with Mr. Valek, Don Ashton died. Precisely what caused Don Ashton's death lies at the heart of this case.

Plaintiff contends that Mr. Ashton survived the accident, crawling out of the Hummer and onto U.S. Hwy 81, where he was subsequently run over and killed by an eighteen-wheeler operated by Defendant George Muthee (“Muthee”) and owned by Defendant Knight Transportation (“Knight”). (Pl.'s Resp. 2–4). Defendants, on the other hand, maintain that Mr. Ashton died as a result of the initial crash with Valek, not due to any contact with the vehicle driven by Muthee. (Defs.' Mot. Summ. J. 1–2).

B. Procedural Background

The Defendants filed a Motion for Summary Judgment on May 24, 2010, arguing, inter alia, that Plaintiff could not prove that Muthee was the proximate cause of Don Ashton's death. The Court denied the Defendants' motion on September 20, 2010, 2010 WL 3703985, finding that Plaintiff had presented sufficient summary judgment evidence to raise a genuine factual dispute over whether Muthee's eighteen-wheeler struck Don Ashton and whether Don Ashton was alive at the time he was struck (doc. 80). The case proceeded toward trial. On the eve of the pretrial conference, Plaintiff filed her Motion for Sanctions (doc. 98), alleging that Defendants had engaged in a bad faith course of conduct by destroying, altering, and concealing evidence, before and after the filing of this suit. (Pl.'s Mot. Sanctions 6–15).

Because of the serious nature of Plaintiff's allegations, the Court determined that the spoliation issue should be decided prior to the commencement of trial. The Court thus entered an order continuing the trial setting, establishing a briefing schedule on the Motion for Sanctions, and setting an evidentiary hearing on the spoliation issue (doc. 100). Defendants responded to the Motion for Sanctions (doc. 104), and Plaintiff replied (doc. 108). After a three-day evidentiary hearing and a full opportunity to review the evidence and to assess the credibility of each witness, the Court finds that Plaintiff has proven by clear and convincing evidence that the Defendants engaged in evidence spoliation and that they should be sanctioned accordingly. The parties' contentions and the pertinent facts follow.

II.PARTIES' ARGUMENTS ON SPOLIATION

A. Plaintiff's Contentions

Plaintiff maintains that Defendants, Knight and Muthee, intentionally altered or destroyed two key pieces of evidence in this case, both highly unfavorable to the defense. First, she contends that the Defendants destroyed evidence on Muthee's truck and tires that implicated the Defendants in Don Ashton's death. (Pl.'s Mot. Sanctions 6–9). Second, Plaintiff maintains that the Defendants intentionally destroyed or altered Qualcomm communications between Muthee and Knight, which occurred in the hours and days surrounding the accident and which evidenced Knight's complicity in Muthee's post-accident conduct. ( Id. at 15). Plaintiff recites a litany of facts, beginning in the aftermath of the accident, which she maintains establish the Defendants' bad faith course of conduct. Specifically, Plaintiff makes the following contentions: ²

• Will Helton, who was in the Hummer with the Ashtons on the night of the accident, has stated that Don Ashton was alive after the initial impact by Valek but that as Muthee drove through the debris field Helton heard a loud explosion after which he found Ashton's body in pieces;

• Muthee immediately fled from the scene of the accident depriving the Kansas Highway Patrol (“KHP”) of the opportunity to examine the eighteen-wheeler and to test Muthee's blood;

• Muthee failed to return to the accident scene or contact Kansas police even after stopping within a mile of the accident and observing that his truck had been damaged and was missing its fairing;

• A 7' x 3' piece of fairing from Muthee's truck was dislodged as he drove through the debris field;

• The dislodged fairing was used by KHP to connect Knight's truck to the accident scene;

• Muthee falsified his driver's log for the time period he was involved in the accident, attempting to make it appear he was sleeping in his berth in Nebraska at the time of the Kansas accident; • After the accident, Muthee continued driving approximately 1,400 miles to Sparks, Nevada where he had the truck's two front steer tires replaced, the replacement authorized and paid for by Knight. The tires are now “lost”;

• Muthee drove the truck to California, parking it in a Home Depot parking lot where it was retrieved by Knight employees who returned it to Knight's facility in California;

• Knight hired a lawyer and investigator within days of the accident for itself and Muthee;

• Within days of the accident, Knight's lawyer and investigator inspected and performed destructive testing on the truck at Knight's facility in California, removing samples of “flesh” from the truck and placed the samples in baggies before any law enforcement officials were able to inspect the truck;

• Knight failed to cooperate with KHP's investigation of the accident by blocking its efforts to interview Muthee and to obtain key documents in its possession such as Muthee's driver file. The lack of cooperation is evidenced in a series of e-mails between KHP and others involved in the investigation, including one in which a KHP trooper laments that the Defendants “have obstructed my investigation”;

• During discovery in this case, Knight concealed their private investigator's August 2007 inspection of the tractor until after the court-imposed expert designation deadline, and were later forced to reveal the inspection by interrogatory in April 2010;

• Knight delayed production of a document showing that it knew that Muthee was illegally driving over hours in the days and hours leading up to the crash, until after the expert designation deadlines;

• Knight failed to preserve Qualcomm, (e-mail type messages) between itself and Muthee during the critical hours surrounding the accident and much of what it did produce for the communications in the days surrounding the accident was in an illegible format.

( See generally id.).

B. Defendants' Response

The Defendants flatly deny that they engaged in spoliation and maintain that Plaintiff cannot meet her burden of proof to establish otherwise. They question whether they had a legal duty to preserve the evidence they are accused of destroying given that their alleged actions occurred “prior to the litigation in this cause” and they were under no “court order to preserve evidence” prior to suit being filed. (Defs.' Resp. 4–5, 7).

As for Plaintiff's factual allegations, the Defendants do not dispute that Muthee drove through the accident debris field and, in so doing, that his truck “contacted” Don Ashton.³ The Defendants further agree that Muthee failed to stop at the accident site, left the state of Kansas, got the two front steer tires replaced, and returned the truck to a parking lot in California, where Knight employees retrieved it. The Defendants, however, strongly deny that Muthee did these things with Knight's knowledge or under its direction. Knight maintains that—to date—Muthee has never communicated with the company about the accident or his post-accident conduct. Knight also maintains that it has not attempted to obtain a statement or an explanation from Muthee about the accident or his actions following the accident, insisting that Muthee acted on his own from the time he departed the accident scene until he abandoned Knight's truck in Los Angeles.

Curiously, in view of its professed lack of involvement with Muthee's post-accident decisions, Knight nevertheless defends him, arguing that he did not realize he had hit something in the accident debris field and, consequently, that his actions following the accident were “innocuous.” ⁴ ( Id. at 13–16).

As for the host of other factual allegations by Plaintiff, the Defendants either deny them or dismiss them as “red herrings” and “leaps of logic.” ( Id. at 8–16). They deny obstructing KHP's attempts to inspect the truck once it was returned to Knight's custody in California. And, instead, insist that the inspection and testing of Muthee's truck by Knight's private investigator and lawyer was conducted “with the full knowledge of the Kansas Highway Patrol.” ( Id. at 10). In any event, the...