Ralser v. Winn Dixie Stores, Inc., 309 F.R.D. 391

Plaintiff Richard Raiser requested FMLA leave on April 30, 2012 and was terminated the next day; his termination and timing are central to his FMLA claim.
On April 30, 2012 supervisor Karena Niblett emailed an "Executive Summary — RRalser(2).doc" recommending termination; the native Word file that would show creation timestamps was not produced.
Winn-Dixie produced a screenshot indicating a February 3, 2012 creation date; forensic imaging later recovered from backups showed the document created/modified on April 30, 2012.
Winn-Dixie’s retention policy (Division Domain) retained up to 4 versions for 365 days; older versions were automatically purged after one year.
Winn-Dixie instituted a litigation hold by May 31, 2012; Raiser sued May 8, 2013 and later sought server imaging; a third-party imaged servers and plaintiff’s experts found no evidence of pre–April 30 drafts.
Court denied Raiser’s spoliation motion, finding Winn-Dixie failed to preserve evidence negligently (failure to disable automatic deletion) but not in bad faith; parties may present discovery-failure evidence at trial.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Winn‑Dixie had a duty to preserve the native Executive Summary and prior drafts	Raiser: Winn‑Dixie knew litigation was imminent and should have preserved drafts and metadata showing when the file originated	Winn‑Dixie: instituted a litigation hold (by May 31, 2012) and produced available copies; automatic retention policy governed deletion	Court: Winn‑Dixie had a duty to preserve (litigation hold acknowledged)
Whether destruction/non‑production of prior versions was intentional (bad faith) supporting an adverse‑inference sanction	Raiser: discrepancy between screenshot and forensic results, plus failure to produce native file, supports inference of intentional spoliation and warrants adverse‑fact finding	Winn‑Dixie: deletions were automatic per retention policy; no evidence of directed deletion or bad‑faith tampering; missing versions could have supported Winn‑Dixie — not plaintiff	Court: No bad faith found; failure to preserve resulted from omission/negligence (not intentional destruction); sanctions denied

Condrey v. SunTrust Bank of Georgia, 431 F.3d 191 (5th Cir. 2005) (federal evidentiary rules govern spoliation in diversity cases)
King v. Ill. Cent. R.R., 337 F.3d 550 (5th Cir. 2003) (adverse inference based on destroyed records requires bad faith)
Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) (litigation hold duty to preserve once litigation is reasonably anticipated)
Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc. v. Cammarata, 688 F. Supp. 2d 598 (S.D. Tex. 2010) (definition of spoliation as destruction or meaningful alteration of evidence)
United States v. Wise, 221 F.3d 140 (5th Cir. 2000) (same — bad‑faith predicate for adverse inference)
Vick v. Texas Employment Commission, 514 F.2d 734 (5th Cir. 1975) (adverse inference requires culpability)