SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - A California school district was unduly censured for routinely erasing video footage that might have been valuable evidence of a sexual assault, an appeals court ruled, finding there was not enough evidence the district knew at the time it would be sued.
A student identified as John Doe and his parents sued Victor Valley Union High School District after school officials told them Doe had allegedly been assaulted in a school bathroom by two other students. Doe was a minor special-needs student attending the high school, supposedly under adult supervision at all times.
On March 8, 2019 a special education teacher told an assistant principal that students were discussing how John Doe and another student had engaged in a sex act in the bathroom the day before. The assistant principal watched a video from March 7 and saw Doe and another boy enter the bathroom, but the video was overwritten two weeks later. The assistant principal testified he assumed school security saved the video. Six months later, Doe and his parents sued the school district.
The trial court ruled in February 2022 that since Doe’s parents were notified of the incident on March 9, the school district was on notice it might be sued. The court ordered harsh sanctions including stripping the school district of most of its defenses against claims it had violated its duty to protect Doe. The district appealed the order and California’s Fourth Appellate District Court reversed.
State law offers defendants a safe haven against sanctions for spoilation of electronic evidence if they destroy it in good faith and have no reasonable expectation it will be needed in litigation. The plaintiffs argued, and the trial court agreed, that the district should have anticipated litigation as soon as it was aware of the allegation Doe had been assaulted.
The appeals court disagreed.
“The mere fact that a party has conducted an internal investigation of an incident and produced a report about it does not necessarily mean the party was on notice of potential litigation,” the court held. “Until Doe’s parents filed their government claim some six months later, they did not communicate with the district or with school officials in such a manner that would have reasonably caused the district to foresee litigation.”
The court remanded the case to the trial court to reconsider sanctions, and if they were still necessary, to consider less punitive ones.
Justice Michael Raphael dissented, saying “reasonably thoughtful people whose profession is to govern schools, charged with a special duty of care, would consider the possibility of litigation when they possess evidence about a sexual assault of a student in their keeping.”