In 18 years of practicing injury law, it has never stopped amazing me how insurance companies and corporate defendants will “lose” or outright destroy important evidence about a personal injury accident. It is often hard to prove that this loss of documents in a personal injury case was intentional. However, with big dollars on the line in a serious injury case, some corporate managers forget their ethics in order to stop the injured person from getting fair compensation.
One example of this bad conduct in an injury case is where the Canadian Pacific Railway Company stands accused of deliberately destroying documents in litigation about a derailment in North Dakota with spilled chemicals harming people. The injury attorney for the hurt families try to prove that these acts of spoiling the evidence are not isolated, but are companywide repeated offenses. However, a lot of times, the judge only wants to hear about what the defendant did in that particular injury case and does not know, or want to know, about the number of times that the railroad company has pulled a similar stunt in the cases where injuries occurred to someone else in a different location. By combining forces with other plaintiff’s injury lawyers who do railroad and significant injury litigation, we try to come up with hard evidence of these abuses.
In one case I had in Maryland, the railroad took the piece of debris that my client tripped on and threw it away, even though it was specifically identified by the railroad worker as something that he tripped on. In a recent premises liability case, the store had conveniently misplaced the video surveillance tape, which would have shown exactly how my client slipped and was hurt. In a recent crossing case that I am working on, the defendant railroad company said that the black box or data event recorder was not properly installed and, therefore, the data about how fast the train was going was not useable. All of these examples show where either these companies are extremely sloppy in the way they do business or they are intentionally hiding information that would help the injured persons prove their cases .
The way the courts are set up, unless you can show willful acts of hiding or destroying evidence, there is not much of a sanction that the court will impose on the defendant corporation or their insurer. You can still argue to the jury that it is highly suspicious that the evidence is missing. However, it still amazes me that railroads and other corporations will play these games and commit overtly dishonest acts merely to save from having to pay money to someone who has been legitimately injured.
Rick Shapiro has practiced personal injury law for over 30 years in Virginia, North Carolina, and throughout the Southeastern United States. He is a Board-Certified Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy (ABA Accredited) and has litigated injury cases throughout the eastern United States, including wrongful death, trucking, faulty products, railroad, and medical negligence claims. During his three-decade career, Shapiro has won client appeals before the VA Supreme Court, VA Court of Appeals, NC Supreme Court, SC Supreme Court, WV Supreme Court, TN Supreme Court, and three times before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, underscoring Shapiro’s trial achievements. In addition, he and his law firm have won settlements/verdicts in excess of $100 million. His success in and out of the courtroom is a big reason why he was named 2019 “Lawyer of the Year” in railroad law in U.S. News & World Report's Best Lawyers publication (Norfolk, VA area), and he has been named a “Best Lawyer” and “Super Lawyer” by those peer-reviewed organizations for multiple years. Rick was also named a “Leader in the Law, Class of 2022” by Virginia Lawyers Weekly (total of 33 statewide honorees consisting of lawyers and judges across Virginia). And in September 2023, Rick was selected as a recipient of the National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) 2023 President’s Award. Although many nominations were submitted from across the country, Rick was just one of eight attorneys chosen by the prestigious National Board which certifies civil trial attorneys across the U.S. Rick was also recently named to Virginia Lawyers Weekly 2024 Virginia’s Go To Lawyers Medical Malpractice. The attorneys awarded this honor are nominated by their colleagues and chosen by a panel from the publication.
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