New trial ordered in the case of the missing security tape

Cy Ryan

Sunday, May 14, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

CARSON CITY - In a precedent-setting case, a woman who suffered serious injuries when she fell in a North Las Vegas convenience store is going to get another chance to prove the business was negligent.

The Nevada Supreme Court used the appeal of Kimberly Bass-Davis to set the record straight on how the state's courts should treat evidence that has been lost or destroyed.

Justice Mark Gibbons, who wrote the majority opinion Thursday, said this case involves a "substantial precedential issue."

Bass-Davis slipped and fell head-first inside a North Las Vegas 7-Eleven in 1999, incurring more than $204,000 in medical bills. She maintained the store failed to post signs that the just-mopped floor was wet.

Within a week, Bass-Davis' sister sought the store's security tape to prove there were no signs, but the store franchisees - Christopher and Kathie Davis - said they sent the tape to the parent company, Southland, to comply with company policy.

Southland said it received the tape and turned it over to its insurer, where it was lost.

Bass-Davis sued, but lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the District Court judge should have told the jury that the tape was lost because of the company's negligence and that the jury could infer that the lost videotape had been unfavorable to the business.

It is the business' responsibility to preserve evidence, the court said in its first ruling on evidence lost due to negligence. The court said the trial judge should have imposed an "appropriate sanction" on the defense, and it ordered a new trial.