Hadley v. Perez, No. 1:25-cv-22162-BB (S.D. Fla. Oct. 12, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
A federal district judge in Florida has ordered an adverse-inference presumption for a plaintiff's deleted phone and iCloud data. The court reached that result under a bad-faith spoliation test rather than Rule 37(e)(2)'s intent-to-deprive standard. Defendant Desiree Perez had moved for sanctions against plaintiff Demoree Hadley under that rule. Perez asked the court to dismiss Hadley's claims or, alternatively, to instruct the jury on an adverse inference. In Hadley v. Perez, the court chose the jury instruction over dismissal. Under the order, the jury is to presume that the destroyed ESI was relevant and favorable to Perez and unfavorable to Hadley. Hadley may rebut that presumption with her own evidence.
Rule 37(e)(2) allows that kind of presumption for lost ESI only on a finding of intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation. The order makes no finding that Hadley intended to deprive Perez of the ESI. The court applied case-law spoliation standards instead.
What happened
Hadley testified that she went in person to Apple to have her iCloud account cleared before she filed suit. Her stated purpose was to stop what she called Perez's illegal access to her phone. Her testimony also described deleting all messages from her phone and more than 130,000 photos and videos. Storage space, she said, was her reason for erasing contents from the phone. Hadley did not file a response to the motion.
The court's analysis
The court relied on Hadley's testimony to find that she knew or should have known of her duty to preserve. In the court's words, she went "to Apple to delete her iCloud specifically before this lawsuit was filed".
The court also required a showing of bad faith, citing Eleventh Circuit authority. As the court described it, bad faith in this setting calls for conduct beyond mere negligence but not malice. The order traces the court's power to sanction to its inherent authority, not to Rule 37(e).
The court found that Hadley's deletion of text messages, photos, and videos "was not accidental or merely negligent". It also found that she deleted the ESI voluntarily. The order never labels that conduct bad faith in terms. Her choice to give her attorney only what she thought was relevant also figured in the court's conclusion that spoliation warranting sanctions had occurred.
In the court's view, dismissal was too severe. The adverse-inference instruction was the appropriate and less punitive cure for Perez's prejudice, the court concluded.
Why it matters
A party facing a presumption request over lost ESI should insist on Rule 37(e)(2)'s intent standard. Voluntary deletion that exceeds negligence does not by itself establish intent to deprive. A responding party's stated reason for deleting will often decide whether intent can be inferred. An innocent explanation such as freeing storage space belongs in the record. A reason tied to the opposing party can point the other way. Hadley said she cleared her iCloud account to end what she called Perez's illegal access to her phone. A movant can recast that explanation as intent to cut Perez off from the data.
A movant should build a record of intent to deprive even where courts have sanctioned on a bad-faith showing. That record protects the presumption if a reviewing court applies Rule 37(e)(2).
Plaintiff's counsel should discuss preserving phones and cloud accounts at the first client meeting. A client's own account of deleting data before suit can establish the duty to preserve. Counsel, rather than the client, should decide relevance once the full device or account is preserved.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
