## Facts

- Jerry Aldridge slipped and fell in a Brookshire Brothers grocery store near a display table and later reported he fell on “chicken grease” near a rotisserie chicken area.
- The incident was recorded by the store’s digital surveillance system, which automatically overwrote footage after 30 days.
- After Aldridge completed an incident report, the store preserved only about eight minutes of video, from shortly before he entered until shortly after the fall.
- The preserved video showed Aldridge’s entry and fall, but the floor area where the substance allegedly was located was blocked by a display table.
- Aldridge requested to view the video shortly after the incident; the store declined.
- Nearly a year later, Aldridge’s counsel requested preservation of additional hours of footage from the day of the fall; by then, the remaining footage had been overwritten.
- Aldridge sued for premises-liability negligence and sought spoliation remedies based on the failure to preserve additional video that could have shown how long the hazard existed.

## Issues

1. Whether spoliation and the appropriate remedy are determinations for the judge or the jury.
2. When, if ever, a trial court may submit a spoliation (adverse-inference) instruction to the jury.
3. Whether the store’s limited preservation of surveillance footage justified a spoliation instruction and related spoliation evidence before the jury.
4. Whether the spoliation instruction likely affected the jury’s finding of negligence, including constructive notice of a dangerous condition.

## Decision

- The Texas Supreme Court reversed the judgment and remanded for a new trial.
- The Court held that spoliation determinations and remedies are questions of law for the trial court, not the jury.
- The Court held that a spoliation instruction is a severe sanction permissible only when:
  - the party intentionally destroyed or failed to preserve evidence, or
  - in extraordinary cases, negligent loss so prejudices the opponent that it eliminates any meaningful ability to present a claim or defense.
- The trial court abused its discretion by allowing extensive spoliation-related evidence before the jury and by submitting a spoliation instruction under the circumstances presented.
- Because the instruction could have skewed the negligence and notice findings, the error was not harmless.

## Legal Principles

- A duty to preserve evidence arises when a party knows or reasonably should know there is a substantial chance of litigation and that evidence within its control is material and relevant.
- Spoliation is an evidentiary/remedial doctrine addressed through the court’s inherent authority; it is not an independent claim for the jury.
- The trial judge must decide whether spoliation occurred and what remedy, if any, is appropriate; submitting spoliation determinations to the jury risks diverting the case from its merits.
- An adverse-inference (spoliation) instruction generally requires intentional destruction reflecting consciousness of wrongdoing; mere negligence is ordinarily insufficient.
- Spoliation-related evidence should generally be kept from the jury unless it is independently relevant to a substantive issue (such as control or notice), in which case limiting instructions should be used.
- In slip-and-fall cases where the defendant did not create the hazard, the plaintiff generally must offer temporal evidence showing the condition existed long enough that the owner should have discovered it; spoliation instructions may not be used to supply missing proof absent the required predicate.

## Conclusion

The court tightened Texas standards for spoliation remedies by assigning spoliation determinations to the trial judge and restricting adverse-inference jury instructions to intentional destruction or extraordinary prejudice, requiring a new trial where an improper spoliation instruction and related evidence likely influenced the verdict.


Brookshire Bros., Ltd. v. Aldridge, 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014)