Poff v. Scullion, No. 2:25-cv-00112-PP, E.D. Wis. (July 9, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
An incarcerated plaintiff asked his prison to preserve a precise ten-minute window of surveillance video the day after the incident he wanted to prove. The prison preserved exactly that window. The footage he needed had most likely occurred just outside it, and everything else was overwritten on the facility's automatic 120-day cycle. When he moved for spoliation sanctions, the court denied the motion. The decision is a plain lesson in how a preservation demand can be drawn so tightly that it defeats itself, and a reminder of what Rule 37(e)(2) still requires before a court will treat lost video as evidence of anything.
What Happened
Jeff Poff, proceeding pro se, alleges that Lieutenant Scullion conducted an improper pat search on December 2, 2022. The day after, Poff sent the facility's security director a written request to retain "corner video of cells 419-420 Approx 10:20 AM-10:30AM 12/2/22 Incident". Security Director Jacob Cirian reviewed the request, watched the footage, and told Poff the video would be retained if available and that Scullion "clearly conduct[ed] an appropriate pat search".
Cirian then emailed the video preservation supervisor, Lieutenant Kolbo, and directed him to save the 419-420 video from 10:20 to 10:30 a.m., which the court found was "exactly what the plaintiff asked for." Kolbo preserved that window. The saved clip turned out to be ten minutes of an empty hallway that, in the court's words, "does not show any individuals", because the pat search had most likely happened just outside the requested time frame. Two days later Kolbo emailed Cirian to report that the preserved video "does not show any interaction between inmate Poff" and anyone else, but Cirian did not read the message and never widened the request. Surveillance video at the facility is automatically overwritten after 120 days, so by the time Poff reviewed the production in January 2026 and found the clip blank, the footage he wanted was gone.
The Court's Analysis
The court quoted Rule 37(e)(2)(A), which permits an inference that lost electronically stored information was unfavorable only on a finding that the party "acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation". It then applied Seventh Circuit spoliation precedent requiring bad faith, under which the loss of evidence on its own supports no adverse inference and what controls is "the reason for the destruction", not the destruction itself. As the moving party, Poff bore the burden of showing that someone destroyed the video "for the purpose of hiding adverse information."
He could not carry it. The court found no evidence that the named defendants had any involvement in preserving the video, and no evidence that Cirian or Kolbo had acted in bad faith. The more likely explanation was mundane. Kolbo preserved the precise window Poff had requested, and the incident fell outside it. A good-faith effort that saved the wrong ten minutes was not spoliation, and the court denied the motion.
Why It Matters
The practical lesson has nothing to do with prisons. A preservation request framed as a narrow clock range gambles that the requester has the timing exactly right, and here the gamble failed by a matter of minutes. Ask for a window wide enough to absorb uncertainty about when an event occurred, tie the request to the event rather than to a stopwatch, and confirm that what was preserved actually captures what you need before the retention period runs.
The automatic 120-day overwrite is the other half of the warning. Systems that purge on a schedule convert a slightly-off request into permanent loss, because there is nothing left to re-pull once the window closes. Move quickly and broadly, then verify.
For the sanctions analysis, the decision is a clean restatement of a demanding standard. Rule 37(e)(2) turns on intent, not misfortune, and a requesting party that receives less than it hoped for bears the risk of its own narrow demand unless it can show the loss was deliberate.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
