A man whose computers were seized as evidence by the New York City Police Department but destroyed before he could retrieve them waited too long to seek damages, an appellate court has ruled.

In 2008, Zbigniew Wikiert was arrested after firefighters put out a blaze at his Queens residence, and investigators found guns and marijuana. Three of Wikiert's computers were seized.

Wikiert was not indicted, and in September 2010, the Queens District Attorney's Office informed him that the computers were no longer needed. But when he went to retrieve the machines from the NYPD's property clerk, he was told they had been destroyed.