Fiorito v. Metropolitan Council

Background

Michael Fiorito is representing himself and alleges that, during several occasions from March through May 2024, Metropolitan Council, referred to in the opinion as Metro Transit, did not adequately maintain elevators and escalators at the Lake Street/Midtown light-rail station. He says this interfered with his safe access to the station. His claims arise under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

Fiorito asked the court to appoint counsel to represent a proposed class of low-income minority and disabled residents in the station’s corridor. He also asked the court to order Metro Transit to preserve all remaining video from the station from February 1, 2024, through May 1, 2025, and to impose an adverse-inference sanction for video that had been deleted. An adverse inference would allow a factfinder to draw a negative conclusion from the loss of evidence.

Motion for Appointment of Counsel

The court denied Fiorito’s renewed motion for appointment of counsel. It explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(g), which addresses appointment of class counsel, applies after a class has been certified. No class had been certified in this case. The court also noted that it had previously dismissed Fiorito’s class-action claims because a person representing himself cannot prosecute class claims.

The court rejected the argument that appointing class counsel under Rule 23(g) could cure that problem. It stated that Fiorito must retain counsel himself if he wishes to pursue class-action claims and cannot require the court to recruit counsel to preserve those claims.

Motion to Compel and for Sanctions

The court denied Fiorito’s motion to compel preservation of evidence and for sanctions on the merits. It found that the request for more than a year of video was disproportionate to the case, which involved a limited number of specific incidents concerning Fiorito’s own use of the station.

The opinion states that the station has multiple cameras recording continuously, that downloading one day of footage from one camera would take Metro Transit an entire business day, and that disabling the system’s automatic overwriting function could cause system crashes affecting multiple stations. The court therefore found the requested preservation unreasonable.

The court also ruled that an adverse-inference sanction was unwarranted. The station’s video was routinely deleted under Metro Transit’s retention system, which generally kept footage for 30 days. The court found no evidence that Metro Transit intended to destroy evidence to obstruct or suppress the truth. It also found that Metro Transit had no reason to preserve the requested evidence when much of it was likely already gone, and that Fiorito first suggested the footage might be relevant to the lawsuit on May 5, 2025.

Disposition

Judge Dulce J. Foster ordered that both Fiorito’s Motion for Appointment of Counsel to Represent Proposed Class and his Motion to Compel Preservation of Evidence and for Sanctions for Spoliation were denied.