Fourth Amendment Case Study Essay

Please review a case in Chapter Five on Criminal Law. Please share the followinginformation regarding one of the criminal law cases in this chapter.
1.
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3.
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Case name and the page number that the case begins on in the textbook.
A summary of the facts.
Issue or problem the court is being asked to address.
Decision.
Please explain how this case is applicable or relevant to a career in
business. Elaborate on why students studying business law should be familiar
with this case.
Arguing that the warrant was vague and overbroad and therefore in violation of the Fourth Amendment, SDI, Kaplan, and
Brunk filed a motion asking the relevant federal district court to suppress evidence obtained from the search (i.l., rule that the
evidence could not be used in the case). After concluding that SDI and the two individual defendants all had standing to
challenge the search of SDP’s business premises, the district court granted the defendants’ motion to suppress. The
government appealed the suppression order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The following edited portion of
the Ninth Circuit’s opinion focuses on whether the individual defendants (Kaplan and Brunk) had legal standing to question
the constitutionality of the search of the corporation’s (SDI’s) business premises.
O’Scannlain, Circuit Judge
We must decide whether corporate executives may challenge a police search of company premises not reserved for the
executives’ exclusive use.
The government argues that Kaplan and Brunk lack standing to challenge the search and seizure of materials from SDI’s
premises. Wisely, the government does not argue that SDI itself lacks standing to challenge the underlying search and seizure.
“[A] corporate defendant has standing with respect to searches of corporate premises and seizure of corporate records.”
[Citation omitted.] We therefore only consider the Fourth Amendment standing of Kaplan and Brunk. Insofar as they do
indeed lack standing, all evidence is admissible as to charges against them. By contrast, insofar as we affirm the district
court’s suppression of some evidence, such evidence will be inadmissible against SDI. Standing, therefore, makes a difference
in this case.
According to the government, [Kaplan’s and Brunk’s] mere ownership and management of SDI, and the steps SDI took to
preserve the security of its business files, are inadequate to support the conclusion that Kaplan and Brunk personally had an
expectation of privacy in the searched areas and seized materials. While “[i]t has long been settled that one has standing to
object to a search of his office, as well as of his home,” [citation omitted], this case presents the novel issue of the extent to
which a business employee may have standing to challenge a search of business premises generally.
The Fourth Amendment ensures that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
A person has standing to sue for a violation of this particular “right of the people” only if there has been a violation “as to
him,” personally. [Citation omitted.] In other words, Fourth Amendment standing … “is a matter of substantive Fourth
Amendment law; to say that a party lacks Fourth Amendment standing is to say that his reasonable expectation of privacy has
not been infringed.” [Citation omitted.] This follows from the Supreme Court’s famous observation that the Fourth
Amendment “protects people, not places,” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967).
To show the government has violated his Fourth Amendment rights, an individual must have “a legitimate expectation of
privacy in the invaded place.” Defendants must demonstrate “a subjective expectation of privacy in the area searched, and
their expectation must be one that society would recognize as objectively reasonable.” [Citations omitted.]
As a logical extension of this approach, “[p]roperty used for commercial purposes is treated differently for Fourth
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Amendment purposes from residential property.” Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 90 (1998). Of course,
individuals may still have a “reasonable expectation of privacy against intrusions by police” into their offices. But, unlike the
nearly absolute protection of a residence, “the great variety of work environments” requires analysis of reasonable
expectations on a case-by-case basis. O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 716, 718 (1987).
Our precedents provide numerous guideposts, however. For starters, it is crucial to Fourth Amendment standing that the place
searched be “given over to [the defendant’s] exclusive use.” We have thus held that mere access to, and even use of, the office
of a co-worker “does not lead us to find an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy.” By the same token, we have
rejected managerial authority alone as sufficient for Fourth Amendment standing. [For instance,] we [have] held the corporate
officer of a hospital, whom we described as the “de facto controlling force in [its] management,” did not have standing to
challenge the seizure of records from the hospital print shop. Even though the defendant “had access to and control of the
print shop operations, his rights did not include any expectation of privacy over documents which were kept at the print shop
premises….” [Case citations omitted throughout paragraph.]
It thus appears that an employee of a corporation, whether worker or manager, does not, simply by virtue of his status as such,
acquire Fourth Amendment standing with respect to company premises. Similarly, to be merely a shareholder of a
corporation, without more, is also not enough. As always, a reasonable expectation of privacy does not arise ex officio, but
must be established with respect to the person in question. The Second Circuit summarized this point memorably in [often-
quoted] language:
When man chooses to avail himself of the privilege of doing business as a corporation, even [if] he is
its sole shareholder, he may not vicariously take on the privilege of the corporation under the Fourth
Amendment; documents which he could have protected from seizure, if they had been his own, may be
used against him, no matter how they were obtained from the corporation. Its wrongs are not his
wrongs; its immunity is not his immunity.
[Citation omitted.]
We took this approach in United States v. Gonzalez, 412 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 2005), in which we held that the directors of a
small, family-run corporation had standing to challenge a wiretap in one of the company’s buildings. That holding relied on
the facts of the case:
[W]e simply hold that because the [defendants] were corporate officers and directors who not only had
ownership of the [premises] but also exercised full access to the building as well as managerial control
over its day-to-day operations, they had a reasonable expectation of privacy over calls made on the
premises.
Thus, in Gonzalez we focused on the close control that the owner-operators exercised over their small business, which
happened to be family-run.
Kaplan and Brunk argue that Gonzalez supports their claim of Fourth Amendment standing, but their argument rests on an
overbroad reading of our opinion. We explicitly tied the defendants’ standing to the “nature of the location.” The defendants
exercised, in the context of “a small, family-run business housing only 25 employees at its peak,” “managerial control over
[the] day-to-day operations” of the office where the conversations the wiretap “seized” took place, they owned the building
where the office was located, and they not only could access the office but actually “exercised full access to the building.” In
our detailed factual analysis, therefore, we made clear that it does not suffice for Fourth Amendment standing merely to own a
business, to work in a building, or to manage an office.
The facts in this case place SDI in a gray area outside the particular facts of Gonzalez, because at most Kaplan and Brunk
managed and worked in the office of a business of which they were, together, controlling shareholders. SDI’s headquarters is
twice the size of the office at issue in Gonzalez. [The] facts show that SDI, through Kaplan and Brunk, took steps to protect
the privacy of its headquarters. But the magistrate judge’s findings do not show that Kaplan and Brunk personally managed
the operation of the office on a daily basis, only that they set its general policy as officers of SDI. Because Kaplan and Brunk
personally exercised less control over the premises in question than did the defendants in Gonzalez, that precedent does not
control here.
Thus, although our precedents provide a basic outline, we are left with little case law directly on point. Exclusive use of an
office may be sufficient, [citation omitted], but Gonzalez illustrates that it is not necessary. Between the lines these cases
draw, it is unclear in which premises and materials belonging to a corporation a corporate employee has a legitimate
expectation of privacy. One of our sister circuits, however, has crafted a balancing test that we believe helps to fill in the gap.
In United States v. Anderson, 154 F.3d 1225 (10th Cir. 1998), the Tenth Circuit [identified] three factors a court should
consider in cases where an employee has not established that the area searched is given over to his exclusive use[:] “(1) the
employee’s relationship to the item seized; (2) whether the item was in the immediate control of the employee when it was
seized; and (3) whether the employee took actions to maintain his privacy in the item.”