Ladd v. Commonwealth

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• declining to find bad faith where defendants made no effort to preserve evidence, but did not intentionally destroy relevant evidence
• declining to find bad faith where defendants made no effort to preserve evidence, but did not intentionally destroy relevant evidence
• declining to give an adverse-inference jury instruction because there was no showing of bad faith but determining it was appropriate to “give an instruction that allows the jury to make any inference they believe appropriate in light of the spoliation”
• explaining spoliation sanctions such as attorney’s fees “may be imposed even where evidence was lost or destroyed due to negligence, so long as the party seeking sanctions can show it suffered prejudice and the other side was on notice that evidence should be preserved”
• “Sanctions for spoliation may also be designed to promote accurate fact finding by the court or jury”
• \sanctions include ... allowing the aggrieved party to question a witness in front of the jury about the missing evidence\

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).