The court enters an adverse inference instruction. The plaintiff produced photographs of the property in discovery, but the ones taken before the storm are gone. Changed phones. Can't find them.
The jury gets to assume those missing photos showed whatever was most damaging to the plaintiff's case.
That's spoliation. And it ended the merits argument before it started.
What Spoliation Is
Spoliation is the destruction, alteration, or loss of evidence relevant to reasonably anticipated litigation. The sanctions depend on intent.
For intentional destruction: adverse inference instructions, case dismissal, default judgment. Courts won't tolerate deliberate evidence tampering.
For negligent loss: curative measures and cost-shifting. Still painful, but not case-ending.
Courts can't function if inconvenient evidence can disappear without consequence. But FRCP 37(e) draws a clear line between someone who deleted files on purpose and someone who lost them through poor record-keeping.
For insurance disputes and construction litigation, spoliation issues arise constantly. A homeowner documents a loss site from a personal device that gets wiped. An adjuster's field notes get overwritten in a system migration. A contractor's pre-construction photos are on a drive that failed.
The question courts ask isn't just whether evidence is gone. The question is: should this party have known litigation was possible, and did they take reasonable steps to preserve?
When the Duty Attaches
The duty to preserve kicks in when litigation is reasonably anticipated. Not filed. Anticipated.
For insurance claims, that's often the moment of loss. A property damage claim over the coverage limits. A liability claim with disputed facts. A coverage denial letter.
The duty extends to all potentially relevant evidence. Photos, videos, documents, communications, metadata. If it might matter in litigation, it needs protection.
Routine document destruction must stop. IT policies that auto-delete files after 90 days become legal traps. Cloud storage that purges inactive accounts can trigger sanctions.
The duty runs until litigation ends or the parties agree to lift preservation requirements. That can be years.
The Digital Evidence Problem
Digital files create unique spoliation risks. They're easy to lose, corrupt, or accidentally overwrite. Metadata disappears. Timestamps change. Files get compressed, converted, or re-uploaded through platforms that strip information.
Here's what courts see constantly:
Device turnover: An adjuster gets a new phone. The old photos transfer, but the embedded GPS and timestamp metadata doesn't survive the migration.
Platform dependency: Critical photos live only in a messaging app. The account gets deactivated. The evidence vanishes.
Format conversion: Video files get compressed for email. The original resolution and creation data is gone.
Cloud chaos: Files sync across devices with different timestamps. Which one is authentic?
The spoliation analysis gets murky when digital files disappear through technical failure rather than deliberate destruction. Did the party take reasonable preservation steps? What's "reasonable" for a non-technical property owner versus an insurance company with full IT departments?
What Blockchain Anchoring Fixes (And Doesn't)
A blockchain anchor doesn't prevent spoliation. If you lose the file, it's still gone.
But it changes the evidence analysis in three ways:
Proves temporal integrity: The hash anchor shows the file existed at a specific moment. Under FRE 901(b)(9), courts can authenticate this as evidence from "a process or system that produces an accurate result."
Independent verification: The blockchain record exists separately from the file. Platform changes, device failures, and format conversions can't affect it.
Chain of custody gap-filling: Even if the original file is lost, the hash anchor proves what existed when. That's often enough to defeat claims that evidence was fabricated after the fact.
FRE 902(13) allows self-authentication of machine-generated records through written certification. A blockchain anchor with proper foundation can enter evidence without live expert testimony.
The anchor doesn't solve spoliation, but it transforms the conversation. Instead of arguing whether evidence existed, parties argue about what the surviving hash proves.
Three Things to Remember
First: Preservation duties start before litigation is filed. When a loss could lead to a coverage dispute, assume the duty has attached.
Second: Digital evidence is fragile. Blockchain anchoring creates an independent record that survives technical failures and platform changes.
Third: The sanctions for intentional versus negligent spoliation are different. But both can derail a case. Better to over-preserve than explain to a judge why critical evidence disappeared.
An adjuster documents a loss site. The phone dies, but the hash anchors remain. That's the difference between a spoliation motion and a clean case file.
