In Klupt v. Krongard, 126 Md. App. 179, 728 A.2d 727, cert. denied, 355 Md. 612, 735 A.2d 1107 (1999), the Court affirmed the lower court's dismissal of a party's counterclaim as a sanction for his destruction of critical tape recordings for which a discovery request was outstanding. The Court noted that even though the Maryland Rules do not deal explicitly with the destruction of evidence, Rule 2-433 permits the dismissal of a party's claim as a sanction for failure to respond to a request for production of documents and failure to obey an order compelling the production of documents. The Court concluded that the sanction of dismissal may be imposed under Rule 2-433 for the destruction of evidence sought in discovery, reasoning that destruction of evidence . . . would render hollow any response to a request for production, even if timely filed, just as it would render an order to compel moot. If dismissal is permissible in those cases, it would seem to be a fortiori permissible in a case of destruction of discoverable evidence. (126 Md. App. at 194.) The Court indicated that a circuit court has inherent authority to sanction conduct that occurred prior to the commencement of the litigation. In that case, the Court determined that the circuit court had inherent authority to sanction a defendant who had destroyed evidence that was the subject of a request for production. The Court recognized four prerequisites to a trial court's sanctioning spoliation of discoverable evidence and suggested that prelitigation spoliation could be subject to sanction: (1) An act of destruction; (2) Discoverability of the evidence; (3) An intent to destroy the evidence; (4) Occurrence of the act at a time after suit has been filed, or, if before, at a time when the filing is fairly perceived as imminent. (Klupt, 126 Md. App. at 199.)