After a fatal accident, the survivors assigned the ownership of the vehicle over to the insurance company. The car was brought to a junkyard, where the airbags were apparently removed and placed in storage. Upon inspecting the vehicle, the plaintiff’s counsel advised the junkyard that the airbags needed to be retained for litigation. By the time suit was filed, and the defendants came to inspect the vehicle, the airbags had apparently been lost, sold, or destroyed. The court notes that the nature of the claim is important to the relevance of the evidence. “Clearly, if a product was manufactured defectively, its defect is likely to be particular to the individual product. Consequently, a party’s examination of that product may be critical to ascertaining, among other things, the presence of the defect. In design defect cases, however, a party’s examination of the individual product at issue may be of lesser importance as the design defect alleged can be seen in other samples of the product. Nevertheless, examination of the individual product in question may still be of significant import in certain design defect cases where, for example, the question whether the alleged defect or some other factor caused a particular injury is at issue.” While striking the testimony of plaintiff’s expert based upon his inspection of the vehicle, the court refused to dismiss the case.Perez v. Hyundai, 440 F.Supp.2d 57 (D.P.R. 2006). [For further disucssion, see “What’s New in Spoliation and E-Discovery?”]