Roadrunner Transportation Services, Inc. v. John Tarwater

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ROADRUNNER TRANSPORTATION
SERVICES, INC.,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JOHN TARWATER,
Defendant - Appellant.
No. 14-55448
D.C. No. 8:10-cv-01534-AG-MLG
MEMORANDUM*
ROADRUNNER TRANSPORTATION
SERVICES, INC.,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
JOHN TARWATER,
Defendant - Appellee.
No. 14-55529
D.C. No. 8:10-cv-01534-AG-MLG
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Andrew J. Guilford, District Judge, Presiding
FILED
MAR 18 2016
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.

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Argued and Submitted March 10, 2016
Pasadena, California
Before: MURPHY,** PAEZ, and NGUYEN, Circuit Judges.
John Tarwater appeals the district court’s entry of default judgment and
award of attorneys’ fees in favor of his former employer, Roadrunner
Transportation Services, Inc. Roadrunner cross-appeals the district court’s
compensatory damages award. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291,
and we affirm.
1. The district court did not abuse its discretion by entering default
judgment as a sanction for Tarwater’s deletion of data from his laptop computers.
See Leon v. IDX Sys. Corp., 464 F.3d 951, 957-58 (9th Cir. 2006) (describing
standard of review for spoliation sanctions). There was ample evidence that
Tarwater deleted emails and files on his laptops after receiving multiple
preservation demands from Roadrunner, and even after the court explicitly ordered
Tarwater to preserve “all data” on his electronic devices. In addition to Tarwater’s
own admissions, a third-party computer expert concluded that files on one of
Tarwater’s devices had been deleted and overwritten during the litigation, and that
the deletions likely “bypasse[d] the [computer’s] Recycle Bin” through a user-
** The Honorable Michael R. Murphy, Senior Circuit Judge for the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.
2

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initiated process. In light of the evidence of spoliation, and the nature of
Roadrunner’s claims, the district court did not clearly err in finding that Tarwater
willfully destroyed the data, that Roadrunner had been deprived of its “primary
evidence of Tarwater’s alleged misappropriation and related misconduct,” and that
a less drastic sanction could not have adequately redressed the prejudice to
Roadrunner. See Anheuser-Busch, Inc. v. Nat. Beverage Distribs., 69 F.3d 337,
348-55 (9th Cir. 1995).1
2. The district court did not abuse its discretion by awarding Roadrunner
$325,000 in attorneys’ fees. See Horphag Research Ltd. v. Pellegrini, 337 F.3d
1036, 1042 (9th Cir. 2003). The court carefully considered the billing entries and
reasonableness of the hourly rates for Roadrunner’s attorneys and reduced the
award to reflect an appropriate level of staffing for the case. The district court also
properly accounted for the degree of success achieved by Roadrunner, as well as
the public’s interest in protecting trade secrets. See Muniz v. United Parcel Serv.,
Inc., 738 F.3d 214, 227 (9th Cir. 2013).
1 Even assuming that applying amended Rule 37(e) (effective December 1,
2015) to this case were “just and practicable,” the district court’s findings would
lead to the same conclusion: Tarwater acted with the intent to deprive Roadrunner
of the spoliated information’s use in this litigation. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e).
3

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3. The district court properly limited Roadrunner’s compensatory damages
to the four customers specifically identified in the First Amended Complaint. See
Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(c); Alan Neuman Prods., Inc. v. Albright, 862 F.2d 1388, 1392
(9th Cir. 1988).
AFFIRMED.
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