Camicia v. Cooley, No. 74048-2-I, 2017 WL 679988 (Wash. Ct. App. Feb. 21, 2017)

Key Insight: Where Defendant destroyed potentially relevant tort-claim records pursuant to its record retention schedule during pending litigation among other discovery abuses and where the trial court therefore ordered monetary sanctions for the discovery violations and indicated that it would consider a spoliation instruction, the appellate court concluded that the trial court?s record did not support a finding that ?the City destroyed the evidence in bad faith, knew that the evidence was important to the pending litigation, or had the duty to preserve the evidence? and thus, it was not clear that spoliation had occurred; error was harmless where $10,000 fine was not based on a finding of spoliation

Nature of Case: Tort (bicycling accident)