Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval v. Express
- Susan Nelson
- 0:24-cv-02601
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 29
In Sandoval v. Dustar Express, Judge Elkins found that Dustar intentionally destroyed GPS telematics data from a truck involved in a collision and recommended an adverse inference jury instruction while ordering Dustar to pay plaintiffs' attorney's fees.
Commercial trucking companies and their insurers who receive post-accident evidence preservation demands, as well as plaintiffs in vehicle collision cases who rely on electronic telematics data (GPS tracking, electronic logging devices) to prove negligence and negligent hiring claims. The opinion also affects parties who self-install third-party tracking devices without properly registering them, as that choice can make data unrecoverable and expose the party to spoliation sanctions.
What happened
In Sandoval v. Dustar Express, Inc., and Shawn Munns, plaintiffs Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval were involved in a vehicle collision with Shawn Munns, a commercial truck driver employed by Dustar Express, on September 16, 2022. Within days of the crash, plaintiffs' counsel sent preservation letters to Dustar, Munns, and Dustar's insurer demanding that electronic data — including GPS and telematics information from the truck — be saved. Despite those letters, Dustar never took steps to preserve data from a Verizon Connect tracking device installed on the truck, allowed the device to be removed and discarded without recording its serial number, and waited years before attempting to retrieve the data, by which time it was unrecoverable.
Plaintiffs moved for sanctions after learning in discovery that the tracking device had existed and that its data was gone. The court found that Dustar had a clear legal duty to preserve the telematics data once it received the preservation letters, that it failed to take any reasonable steps to do so, and that the data can no longer be retrieved. The court rejected Dustar's explanations — including that it lacked physical access to the truck, that the device stopped working on its own, and that it reasonably relied on its insurer and attorney to handle preservation — finding these arguments either legally wrong or contradicted by the record. The court also noted that Dustar gave contradictory accounts of what happened to the device, undermining the credibility of its witnesses.
Magistrate Judge Shannon G. Elkins granted the motion for sanctions in part and denied it in part. On the more serious branch of the sanctions rule — requiring proof that Dustar intended to deprive plaintiffs of the evidence — the court recommended that a jury be instructed it may presume the lost data would have been unfavorable to Dustar, with the precise wording of that instruction to be determined closer to trial. Separately, as an immediate order, the court granted plaintiffs' request for attorney's fees and costs incurred in investigating the data loss and bringing the sanctions motion, finding plaintiffs were prejudiced by the destruction of evidence relevant to their claims about the collision and Dustar's hiring and supervision of Munns. The court denied the remainder of plaintiffs' requested curative measures.
The detailed version
- Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval v. Express · No. 0:24-cv-02601
- Susan Nelson
- Mar. 31, 2026
Background
On September 16, 2022, a vehicle collision occurred between plaintiffs Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval and Shawn Munns at a Minnesota highway intersection. At the time, Munns was employed by Dustar Express, Inc. as a commercial truck driver and was operating a tractor-trailer owned by Dustar, referred to throughout the litigation as "Truck 709." Law enforcement had Truck 709 towed and placed under a hold immediately after the crash.
Within five days of the collision, plaintiffs' counsel sent detailed preservation letters to Dustar, Munns, and Dustar's insurer, Secura Insurance, explicitly demanding preservation of GPS and telematics data, electronic logging device data, and all computer data from the tractor and trailer. Dustar forwarded the letter to Secura but took no independent preservation steps. Dustar had retained an experienced trucking accident attorney, but the court found that reliance on counsel or the insurer does not relieve a party of its own duty to preserve evidence.
Dustar had a Verizon Connect vehicle tracking unit (VTU) — a palm-sized device mounted under the dashboard and connected to the truck's onboard diagnostic port — installed on Truck 709 at the time of the collision. The VTU transmitted GPS data and harsh-driving events (such as hard braking or rapid acceleration) to Verizon Connect's servers every 30 to 120 seconds. That data was stored on both a client-accessible platform called Verizon Reveal (with a 12-month retention window) and Verizon Connect's long-term internal archive (with up to a 5-year retention window).
Plaintiffs did not learn of the VTU's existence until February 2025, when Dustar disclosed it in interrogatory responses. Dustar later supplemented its responses to say the VTU was "destroyed in an accident that occurred on May 9, 2023," then later claimed the VTU had been inoperable since the date of the collision and was replaced on April 12, 2023. Dustar's two affiants — co-owner Patti Koopmans and office administrator Kimberly Rens — submitted contradictory affidavits: Koopmans stated Dustar had not removed or disabled the device; Rens stated Dustar had replaced it in April 2023. At the December 4, 2025 hearing, Dustar's counsel could not explain the contradiction.
Verizon's corporate representative testified that the data could still potentially be located in Verizon's long-term archive using the VTU's serial number, but Dustar had self-installed the device without registering it to Truck 709's vehicle identification number (VIN) or to Munns' name in its Verizon account. Verizon searched using the VIN and Munns' name and found only irrelevant data for a different truck. Dustar never preserved the VTU's serial number, and after the court gave Dustar additional time after the December 2025 hearing to locate the VTU or its serial number, Dustar reported in a December 31, 2025 letter that it had been unable to do so.
Legal Framework: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e)
Rule 37(e) governs spoliation (destruction or failure to preserve) of electronically stored information (ESI). It authorizes sanctions only when: (1) the ESI should have been preserved in anticipation of litigation; (2) a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it; and (3) the ESI cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery.
If those threshold requirements are met, the court may impose two tiers of sanctions: - Rule 37(e)(1): Upon finding prejudice to the opposing party, the court may order measures "no greater than necessary" to cure the prejudice — such as monetary sanctions or attorney's fees. - Rule 37(e)(2): Only upon finding that the party "acted with the intent to deprive" the opposing party of the information may the court instruct the jury to presume the lost information was unfavorable to the spoliating party, or in extreme cases dismiss the action or enter default judgment.
The moving party bears the burden of proving spoliation. Negligent or even grossly negligent conduct is insufficient for the more severe 37(e)(2) sanctions; there must be evidence of "a serious and specific sort of culpability."
Duty to Preserve
The court found Dustar's duty to preserve the VTU data arose on September 21, 2022, when it received plaintiffs' preservation letter — less than a week after the crash. The letter explicitly identified telematics and GPS data as evidence to be preserved. The court rejected Dustar's argument that the letter's broad scope rendered it an unreasonable trigger, holding that it is the preserving party's burden to identify and save relevant ESI once litigation is reasonably foreseeable.
Reasonable Steps to Preserve
The court found Dustar took no reasonable steps to preserve the VTU data. It rejected three arguments Dustar advanced:
- Physical access to the truck: The court found this irrelevant because the VTU data was accessible online through Dustar's Verizon Reveal account, as both Koopmans and Rens had demonstrated by accessing it themselves.
- The VTU allegedly stopped working: The court found this claim unsupported by the record. The Verizon email Dustar produced stated only that Truck 709 was no longer in Dustar's account — not that the VTU had stopped generating data. And Rens did not review the Verizon Reveal data for Truck 709 until she needed to respond to discovery, despite generating monthly reports from that platform. By that time, the 12-month Verizon Reveal retention window had long since closed.
- Reliance on insurer and counsel: The court held that forwarding a preservation letter to an insurer does not discharge a party's own preservation obligation, and that parties are responsible for their attorneys' conduct.
More significantly, the court found that Dustar affirmatively removed and discarded the VTU — the only means of accessing the data from Verizon's long-term archive via serial number — without recording its serial number, even after receiving the preservation letter, after plaintiffs' counsel specifically asked about telematics devices, and after the parties conducted a joint inspection of the truck.
Irreplaceability
Although the VTU data may still exist somewhere in Verizon's long-term archive, the court found it is not restorable or replaceable. Verizon cannot search its archive effectively without the VTU's serial number, Truck 709's VIN was never associated with the VTU in Dustar's account, and Dustar has been unable to locate the physical VTU or its serial number despite a court-ordered opportunity to try.
Intent to Deprive — Rule 37(e)(2)
The court found that Dustar acted with intent to deprive plaintiffs of the VTU data, distinguishing mere negligence from the required "serious and specific culpability." Key factors:
- Active destruction: Dustar did not merely fail to pause an automatic-deletion process. It physically removed and discarded the VTU — the one item that could have unlocked the archived data — after receiving the preservation letter and after direct communications with opposing counsel about the device's existence. - Timing: Removal occurred after the preservation letter, after plaintiffs' counsel's October 2022 inquiry about telematics devices, and after the joint inspection. - Knowledge: Dustar used Verizon Reveal monthly for regulatory reporting and its co-owner monitored driver speed data through the platform, demonstrating it knew how to access and preserve the data. - Contradictory accounts: Dustar gave at least two different explanations in discovery for what happened to the VTU (accident destruction vs. inoperability/replacement), and its own affiants' sworn statements contradicted each other. The court found these shifting representations undermined the credibility of both Koopmans and Rens. - Failure to contact Verizon: Dustar never asked Verizon to preserve or download VTU data after the crash, and Verizon's entire correspondence file for 2022 contained no mention of the collision.
The court concluded these circumstances, taken together, demonstrated intent to deprive plaintiffs of the VTU evidence under Rule 37(e)(2).
Sanctions Imposed
Recommendation: Adverse Inference Instruction (Rule 37(e)(2)) The court recommended granting plaintiffs' motion to the extent it seeks an adverse inference instruction — a direction to the jury that it may presume the lost VTU data would have been unfavorable to Dustar. Because expert discovery had just concluded and trial was not imminent, the court deferred the precise wording of the instruction to a later date closer to trial. This portion is a recommendation to the district judge, who must adopt, reject, or modify it.
Recommendation: Denial Without Prejudice of Other Requested Sanctions (Rule 37(e)(2)) The court recommended denying without prejudice all other requests for sanctions under Rule 37(e)(2).
Order: Attorney's Fees and Costs (Rule 37(e)(1)) Separately, as a direct order (not a recommendation), the court granted plaintiffs' request for the attorney's fees and costs incurred in investigating the data loss and bringing the sanctions motion, finding plaintiffs were prejudiced because the lost data was directly relevant to both the collision itself and the negligent hiring, retention, and supervision claims. Plaintiffs were ordered to submit a detailed fee submission within 21 days; Dustar may respond within 14 days of that filing.
Denial of Other Curative Measures (Rule 37(e)(1)) The court declined to grant other curative measures plaintiffs requested under Rule 37(e)(1), finding monetary sanctions sufficient and noting that some of the proposed measures would effectively operate as the more drastic 37(e)(2) sanctions without the required intent finding.
Procedural Posture Because Magistrate Judge Elkins issued this decision as a Report and Recommendation on the 37(e)(2) sanctions and as a direct Order on the 37(e)(1) monetary sanctions, the adverse inference instruction recommendation is subject to review by the assigned district judge.
Read the full 29-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.