Adkins v. Wolever’s Empirical Analysis
554 F.3d 650 · 2009
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 4 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 90 later decisions — most recently August 2024 · most notably O'Brien v. ED Donnelly Enterprises Inc. (2009), United States v. Martinez (2009)
16 federal appellate · 4 district · 4 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Chambers v. Nasco, Inc. · State v. Simpson · Salmi v. Secretary of Health & Human Services · Reilly v. NatWest Markets Group Inc. · Silvestri v. General Motors Corp.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 90 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In contrast to our persistent application of state law in this area, other circuits apply federal law for spoliation sanctions. See, e.g., Silvestri v. Gen. Motors Corp. , 271 F.3d 583 , 590 (4th Cir. 2001) ; Reilly v. Natwest Mkts. Group Inc. , 181 F.3d 253 , 267 (2d Cir. 1999) ; Glover v. BIC Corp. , 6 F.3d 1318 , 1329 (9th Cir. 1993). We believe that this is the correct view for two reasons. First, the authority to impose sanctions for spoliated evidence arises not from substantive law but, rather, "from a court's inherent power to control the judicial process." Silvestri , 271 F.3d at 590 (citing Chambers v. NASCO, Inc. , 501 U.S. 32 , 45-46, 111 S.Ct. 2123 , 115 L.Ed.2d 27 (1991) ). Second, a spoliation ruling is evidentiary in nature and federal courts generally apply their own evidentiary rules in both federal question and diversity matters. King v. Ill. Cent. R.R. , 337 F.3d 550 , 556 (5th Cir. 2003). These reasons persuade us now to acknowledge the district court's broad discretion in crafting a proper sanction for spoliation.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] proper sanction will serve the purposes of leveling the evidentiary playing field and sanctioning the improper conduct. Because failures to produce rele vant evidence fall along a continuum of fault-ranging from innocence through the degrees of negligence to intentionality, the severity of a sanction may, depending on the circumstances of the case, correspond to the party’s fault. Thus, a district court could impose many different kinds of sanctions for spoliated evidence, including dismissing a case, granting summary judgment, or instructing a jury that it may infer a fact based on lost or destroyed evidence.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a federal court's inherent powers include broad discretion to craft proper sanctions for spoliated evidence.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.