Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval v. Express
- Susan Nelson
- 0:24-cv-02601
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 29
In Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval v. Dustar Express, Inc., and Shawn Munns, Magistrate Judge Shannon G. Elkins recommended that the jury be told it may presume destroyed GPS tracking data was harmful to Dustar, and separately ordered Dustar to pay the plaintiffs' attorney's fees and costs for bringing the spoliation motion, finding that Dustar intentionally failed to preserve electronic vehicle tracking data from the truck involved in a 2022 collision.
Commercial trucking companies and their insurers who possess electronic vehicle telematics data (such as GPS and driving-behavior tracking systems) and face personal injury or negligence litigation arising from vehicle accidents; parties and counsel in civil litigation who receive preservation letters and must respond to them; plaintiffs in vehicle collision cases who may seek sanctions when electronic evidence is lost or destroyed.
What happened
This case, Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval v. Dustar Express, Inc., and Shawn Munns, arises from a September 16, 2022 vehicle collision in Minnesota between the plaintiffs and Shawn Munns, a commercial truck driver employed by Dustar Express, Inc. Within days of the crash, the plaintiffs' lawyers sent detailed preservation letters to Dustar, Munns, and Dustar's insurer demanding that all electronic vehicle data be saved. Dustar's truck had a Verizon Connect device — a small GPS and driving-behavior tracker — installed at the time of the crash, but Dustar never took steps to download or save that data, the data expired under Verizon's one-year retention policy, and Dustar later physically removed and discarded the device without recording its serial number, which was the only remaining way to retrieve the data from Verizon's long-term archive.
The plaintiffs moved for sanctions, arguing that Dustar intentionally destroyed electronically stored information — specifically the vehicle tracking data — that would have been relevant to their claims of negligent driving and negligent hiring, retention, and supervision of Munns. Dustar offered several shifting and contradictory explanations: first that the device was destroyed in a later accident, then that it had been inoperable since the crash day, and its two affiants contradicted each other on whether the device was ever removed. Verizon's corporate representative testified that the data could likely still be found in Verizon's long-term archive if anyone had the device's serial number, but Dustar could not produce it even after being given extra time by the court to locate it.
Magistrate Judge Shannon G. Elkins found that Dustar had a clear duty to preserve the tracking data, failed to take any reasonable steps to do so, and acted with intent to deprive the plaintiffs of that evidence — going beyond mere negligence. As a result, Judge Elkins recommended that the presiding district judge instruct the jury at trial that it may presume the lost tracking data would have been unfavorable to Dustar, with the exact wording of that instruction to be determined closer to trial. Additionally, Judge Elkins directly ordered Dustar to pay the plaintiffs' reasonable attorney's fees and costs incurred in investigating the data loss and bringing the sanctions motion, while denying the plaintiffs' other requested remedies.
The detailed version
- Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval v. Express · No. 0:24-cv-02601
- Susan Nelson
- Mar. 31, 2026
Background
On September 16, 2022, plaintiffs Edvin Sandoval and Hugo Sandoval were involved in a vehicle collision with Shawn Munns, a commercial truck driver employed by Dustar Express, Inc. ("Dustar"), at the intersection of Minnesota Trunk Highway 60 and County Highway 1. The tractor-trailer Munns drove, referred to as "Truck 709," was owned by Dustar. Immediately after the crash, law enforcement towed Truck 709 and placed it under a hold, where it remained until March 31, 2023.
Within days of the crash, on September 21–22, 2022, plaintiffs' counsel sent preservation letters to Dustar, Munns, and Dustar's insurer, Secura Insurance. The letters specifically demanded preservation of GPS location data, telematics data (from systems such as OmniTRACS and similar), electronic logging device data, and all computer data from the tractor or trailer for the day of the collision and the six months preceding it. Dustar, upon receiving the letter, simply forwarded it to Secura; Secura made no apparent response. Dustar retained experienced trucking accident attorney Mark Brown, but neither Dustar nor its counsel took any steps to preserve electronic data. On October 27, 2022, plaintiffs' counsel emailed attorney Brown asking whether Truck 709 had any cameras, electronic logs, or aftermarket additions; Brown did not respond to that question.
Dustar eventually disclosed in February 2025 — during the first round of discovery — that Truck 709 had a Verizon Connect vehicle tracking unit ("VTU") installed at the time of the crash. A VTU is a palm-sized device that connects to a truck's onboard diagnostic port, records GPS location and harsh driving events (such as hard braking or rapid acceleration) every 30 to 120 seconds, and transmits that data to Verizon Connect's servers. Data is stored on the client-accessible "Verizon Reveal" platform for 12 months, and in Verizon Connect's long-term internal archive for up to five years.
Dustar subsequently gave shifting explanations about the VTU's fate: first claiming the device was destroyed in a separate accident on May 9, 2023; then claiming it had been inoperable since the day of the crash and was replaced in April 2023. Two Dustar affiants contradicted each other — co-owner Patti Koopmans swore that Dustar did not remove or disable the device, while Office Administrator Kimberly Rens swore that Dustar replaced the VTU in April 2023. Dustar's counsel acknowledged at oral argument that the affidavits were contradictory and could not explain why.
Verizon's corporate representative testified that the VTU data could likely still exist in Verizon's long-term archive, but could only be retrieved using the device's serial number. Because Dustar had self-installed the VTU without registering Truck 709's Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) or Shawn Munns' name to the device in their Verizon account, searches using those identifiers returned no relevant data. Verizon reviewed its entire 2022 correspondence file with Dustar (700 pages) and found no mention of the collision and no preservation request. After the December 4, 2025 hearing, the court gave Dustar 26 additional days to locate the VTU or its serial number. Dustar reported on December 31, 2025 that it could not do so.
Legal Framework: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e)
Rule 37(e) governs sanctions for the loss of electronically stored information (ESI — meaning documents, data, or records stored in electronic form). It has two threshold requirements: (1) a party had a duty to preserve the ESI and failed to take reasonable steps to do so, and (2) the ESI cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery. Once those are met, two tracks of sanctions are available:
- Rule 37(e)(1): If the opposing party suffered prejudice from the loss, the court may order measures "no greater than necessary" to cure that prejudice — commonly monetary sanctions or limited evidentiary remedies. - Rule 37(e)(2): If the court finds the party acted with intent to deprive the other side of the information, the court may impose harsher sanctions, including an adverse inference instruction (telling the jury it may or must assume the lost data was harmful to the spoliating party), or even dismissal or default judgment.
Negligence or gross negligence is insufficient for Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions; there must be evidence of "a serious and specific sort of culpability."
Duty to Preserve
The court found that Dustar's duty to preserve arose on September 21, 2022, when it received plaintiffs' preservation letter. The letter explicitly identified telematics data and onboard computer data as items to be preserved, and explicitly warned of legal consequences for failure to do so. The court rejected Dustar's argument that the letter was too broad to be actionable, holding that the breadth of a preservation letter does not negate the duty — the preserving party must preserve evidence relevant to the reasonably foreseeable litigation.
Failure to Take Reasonable Steps
The court found Dustar failed to take any affirmative steps to preserve the VTU data, despite multiple opportunities:
- Dustar's co-owner and office administrator both regularly accessed the Verizon Reveal platform, so physical unavailability of Truck 709 (under law enforcement hold) was irrelevant to preserving the cloud-based data. - The Verizon Reveal platform retained data for 12 months — through September 2023 — during which time Dustar never attempted to download or preserve Truck 709's data. - Dustar removed and discarded the physical VTU in April 2023 without recording its serial number, eliminating the only remaining path to recover data from Verizon's long-term archive. - Dustar did not attempt to contact Verizon to preserve data until November 2025 — more than two years after the preservation letter and over a year after Verizon Reveal's retention window had closed. - Dustar's claimed reliance on Secura and retained counsel to handle preservation did not relieve Dustar of its own duty; parties are responsible for the conduct of their attorneys.
Irreplaceability of the ESI
Although Verizon's long-term archive may still hold VTU data, it is not retrievable because Dustar self-installed the VTU without linking it to Truck 709's VIN or Munns' name in its Verizon account, and Dustar discarded the device without noting its serial number — the only remaining search key. The court therefore found the ESI cannot be restored or replaced.
Intent to Deprive (Rule 37(e)(2))
The court found that Dustar acted with intent to deprive plaintiffs of the VTU data, based on several factors considered together:
- Knowledge and capability: Dustar's employees accessed Verizon Reveal monthly for regulatory reports and were familiar with how to use the platform. This was not a case of ignorance.
- Active physical destruction: Dustar did not merely fail to preserve cloud data — it affirmatively removed and discarded the VTU after receiving the preservation letter, after plaintiffs' counsel specifically asked about onboard devices, and after the parties jointly inspected the truck. The timing of this destruction was treated as significant evidence of intent.
- Shifting and contradictory explanations: Dustar provided at least two different stories about the VTU's fate in discovery, and its own affiants contradicted each other. The court found this undermined the credibility of both Koopmans and Rens and was consistent with a pattern of intentional concealment.
- Failure to use available remedies: Dustar never contacted Verizon to request preservation during the 12-month window, even though it routinely used Verizon's customer support for other purposes.
The court analogized the case to Paisley Park Enterprises, Inc. v. Boxill, 330 F.R.D. 226 (D. Minn. 2019), where mere failure to disable auto-delete might have been negligence, but affirmative wiping and discarding of devices crossed into intentional destruction.
Sanctions Imposed
Under Rule 37(e)(2) — Adverse Inference Instruction (Recommendation)
The court recommends (because this is a magistrate judge's report and recommendation on this portion, subject to review by the assigned district judge) that the jury be given an adverse inference instruction — meaning the jury may be told to presume that the lost VTU data was unfavorable to Dustar. The plaintiffs requested a mandatory adverse inference instruction (i.e., the jury must presume the data was unfavorable), but the court deferred the question of whether the instruction will be mandatory or permissive to a later date closer to trial, noting the record is not yet closed and expert challenges are pending.
Under Rule 37(e)(1) — Attorney's Fees (Direct Order)
The court directly ordered Dustar to pay plaintiffs' reasonable attorney's fees and costs incurred in investigating the data loss and bringing the sanctions motion. Plaintiffs must file a fee submission within 21 days; Dustar has 14 days after that to respond. The court declined to grant plaintiffs' other requested curative measures, finding monetary sanctions sufficient.
Procedural Posture
This is a Report and Recommendation and Order from Magistrate Judge Elkins. The adverse inference instruction recommendation is subject to objection and review by the assigned district judge (whose initials are SRN). The attorney's fees order is a direct order from the magistrate judge. The case remains pending; a trial date has not been set.
Reviewer note from the AI+
Read the full 29-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.