Michele E. Shepherd and Larue Graves v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that sanctions under the court’s inherent power can \include ... drawing adverse evidentiary inferences\
• holding that sanction of dismissal is appropriate where a “destroyed document is dispositive of the case, so that an issue-related sanction effectively disposes of the merits anyway”
• noting that “inherent power sanctions available to courts include ... drawing adverse evidentiary inferences or precluding the admission of evidence.”
• acknowledging that “inherent power sanctions available to courts include” among other things the “award[ ] of attorney’s fees and expenses[.]”
• holding that each party has “ ‘an obligation to preserve and also not to alter documents it knew or reasonably should have known were relevant ... if it knew the destruction or alteration of those documents would prejudice [its opponent].’”
• emphasizing that appropriate sanctions should “reflect our 57 judicial system’s strong presumption in favor of adjudications on the merits”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).