In 2001, 11 Asian-American police officers filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey claiming that they were passed over for promotions based on their race. After litigating the case for 11 years, seven of the plaintiffs prevailed at trial in the Southern District of New York. Both the Port Authority and the losing plaintiffs appealed to the 2nd Circuit.
The losing plaintiffs argued that the district judge erred in not instructing the jury that the Port Authority had destroyed evidence and that it should assume that the evidence would have been unfavorable. At issue were folders that contained information that supervisors used to make decisions about promotions of police officers in the late 1990s. The Port Authority failed to implement a litigation hold at the outset of the litigation, and as a result, at least 32 folders were lost or destroyed.
