Orellana v. Jose A. Lopez

Background

Claudio Orellana sued Jose A. Lopez, Jr. and Byram Mason and Building Supply Corp. over a February 27, 2023 accident involving trucks. Orellana moved for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), arguing that defendants failed to preserve videos of the accident and the metadata associated with those videos. He also moved to strike a declaration from William Jacob Green, a digital-forensics expert submitted by defendants.

Defendants cross-moved to strike the report of Orellana’s digital-forensics expert, Robert Knudsen. Orellana characterized that report as rebuttal evidence responding to the report of defendants’ biomechanical expert, Dr. Lars Reinhart.

Spoliation sanctions and Green Declaration

Spoliation means the destruction, significant alteration, or failure to preserve evidence for litigation. The court explained that a party seeking sanctions must first show that relevant evidence was actually lost or destroyed.

The court found that Orellana did not make that showing. Michael Luiso, Byram Mason’s president, stated that two clips had been extracted from the company’s security system and saved to its computer system. He also stated that he compared the original footage with the extracted clips, found them identical, and confirmed that the clips had not been altered.

The court credited the explanation that the security system continuously recorded and routinely overwrote older footage, making extraction of relevant clips the appropriate and practical way to preserve them. The court also found that the produced clips contained metadata, including resolution, video format, frame rate, data rate, and aspect ratio. Orellana and Knudsen did not identify a specific category of metadata that had existed in another version of the videos but was missing from the produced versions.

The court also rejected Orellana’s argument that differences between his earlier deposition testimony and the videos showed that the videos had been altered. The court noted that Orellana later testified that the videos fairly and accurately depicted the accident and his post-accident activities.

Because Orellana did not establish that electronically stored information had been lost or destroyed, the court did not reach the question of what sanctions might be appropriate. It denied Orellana’s motion for spoliation sanctions.

The court separately denied Orellana’s motion to strike the Green Declaration. It found that defendants’ failure to identify Green earlier was substantially justified because his involvement became necessary only after Orellana retained Knudsen and filed the sanctions motion. The court also found the declaration important and found no unfair prejudice to Orellana.

Knudsen Report

Rule 26 permits a rebuttal expert report to address and counter the same subject matter identified in another party’s expert disclosure. The court found that Knudsen’s report did not do that. Instead, the report challenged the authenticity and reliability of the videos and supported Orellana’s argument that the videos should be barred from use.

The court noted that Knudsen’s report did not address Dr. Reinhart’s expertise or his opinions about whether the accident caused Orellana’s claimed injuries. It also found that the report introduced a new theory after Orellana had possessed the videos for months and after defendants’ experts had relied on them. The court concluded that presenting this new theory at that stage was not substantially justified and would prejudice defendants.

The court therefore granted defendants’ cross-motion to strike the Knudsen Report.

Conclusion and next step

The court denied Orellana’s motion for spoliation sanctions, denied Orellana’s motion to strike the Green Declaration, and granted defendants’ cross-motion to strike the Knudsen Report. The parties were directed to discuss a schedule for deposing Orellana’s other rebuttal expert, if defendants intended to conduct that deposition, and to notify the court by October 17, 2025.