Residential Funding Corporation v. Degeorge Financial Corp., Degeorge Home Alliance, Inc. And Degeorge Capital Corp

How courts have described this case

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

• noting that a district court fails to apply the proper legal standard where it analyzes only whether a party “acted in ‘bad faith’ or with ‘gross negligence’ ”
• explaining that “where a party seeking an adverse inference adduces evidence that its opponent destroyed potential evidence (or otherwise rendered it unavailable) in bad faith or through gross negligence (satisfying the culpable state of mind factor
• reasoning that even mere negligence could support an adverse inference instruction under the circumstances
• reasoning that the “culpable state of mind” factor for adverse evidentiary determination is satisfied by showing that evidence was destroyed either knowingly or negligently “because each party should bear the risk of its own negligence”
• explaining that “[d]istrict courts should not countenance ‘purposeful sluggishness’ in discovery on the part of parties or attorneys and should be prepared to impose sanctions when they encounter it,” even if substantive evidentiary sanctions are not warranted
• “[B]ad faith alone is sufficient circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable fact finder could conclude that the missing evidence was unfavorable to that party.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).