Martin v. United States, No. 23-10062 (11th Cir. Oct. 7, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
In an October 7 published opinion, the Eleventh Circuit drew inferences from missing phone data and a discarded GPS unit at summary judgment. The plaintiffs had not moved for spoliation relief before that stage. Their suit arises from a 2017 FBI raid on the wrong house. In the district court's view, inferences from the discarded unit depended on a specific request for spoliation relief. According to the panel, a court deciding summary judgment already reads the evidence in the nonmovant's favor.
What happened
In October 2017, an FBI SWAT team broke down the door of the wrong house. The agent who led the raid said his personal GPS unit had directed him there. He threw the unit away shortly after the raid, an act the panel noted he has never explained. After the residents sued, the district court granted the agent qualified immunity on their Fourth Amendment claim. On remand from the Supreme Court, the panel separately affirmed dismissal of the residents' tort claims against the United States on sovereign immunity grounds.
A central factual dispute was whether the agent had scouted the target home before the raid. The agent said a colleague accompanied him to the target home on each of two occasions. Neither colleague's GPS data placed that colleague at the target home at those times. The agent corrected a sworn declaration that had named one of them. His own phone data for the days before the raid could not be located. The photographs he said he took while scouting had no metadata.
The court's analysis
The district court had concluded that the plaintiffs did not request specific relief for the alleged spoliation of the GPS unit. Without that relief, it reasoned, their argument rested on speculation. The panel noted that the plaintiffs had requested a special interrogatory on the agent's bad faith in anticipation of a post-trial sanctions motion.
At trial, the panel explained, a jury may draw inferences for either side. Because a jury has that latitude, a spoliation instruction is necessary at trial. At summary judgment, the court already views the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmovant. The panel concluded that the plaintiffs' failure to move for spoliation relief before the summary judgment motion was not fatal to their claim. The district court, it added, still had to account for the circumstantial evidence of a constitutional violation.
The panel also rejected the district court's speculation rationale. In the panel's reasoning, the agent's unexplained disposal of his GPS after leading his team to the wrong house supports inferences against him. The panel then drew all inferences regarding the missing cell phone records and the disposal of the GPS in the plaintiffs' favor. It also relied on undisputed differences between the two houses. A jury could find, the panel concluded, that the agent did not make reasonable efforts to avoid error. It reversed the grant of qualified immunity.
Why it matters
Under this opinion, a party opposing summary judgment in the Eleventh Circuit can rely on missing evidence without first moving for spoliation relief. Its opposition brief should identify what is missing, when it went missing, and which disputed fact it bears on. A party deferring a spoliation motion can still lay groundwork for a later sanctions request, as these plaintiffs did by seeking a special interrogatory on bad faith.
A moving party should expect its witness's sworn account to be tested against other people's ESI. Before the witness signs a declaration, counsel should compare the recollection with the location data and metadata of the people it names.
An unexplained disposal of a personal device after an incident can support inferences against its owner, as the GPS disposal did in this case. Preservation instructions should therefore reach personal devices used for work once an incident is likely to be litigated.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
