Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55632/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55632-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
City of Montclair
Appellee
G. Fondario
Appellee
Hospitality Franchise Service, Inc.
Appellant
Mahesh Patel
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MAHESH PATEL; HOSPITALITY

FRANCHISE SERVICE, INC., DBA

Galleria Motel,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

CITY OF MONTCLAIR, a municipal

corporation; G. FONDARIO, Badge

No. F943,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 13-55632

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-08637-

MWF-SP

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Michael W. Fitzgerald, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted June 1, 2015*

Pasadena, California

Filed August 18, 2015

* The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision

without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

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2 PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR

Before: Milan D. Smith, Jr. and N. Randy Smith, Circuit

Judges and Royce C. Lamberth,** Senior District Judge.

Opinion by Judge N.R. Smith

SUMMARY***

Civil Rights

The panel affirmed the district court’s order dismissing a

complaint brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that

police officers violated plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights

when they came onto the public areas of his motel and cited

him for code violations observed in plain view.

The panel held that police officers do not conduct a search

within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment merely by

entering an area of private, commercial property that is open

to the public. 

** The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, Senior District Judge for the U.S.

District Court for the District of Columbia, sitting by designation.

 

*** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR 3

COUNSEL

Frank A. Weiser, Los Angeles, California, for PlaintiffsAppellants.

William Litvak and Gilbert Mikalian, Dapeer Rosenblit &

Litvak LLP, Los Angeles, California, for DefendantsAppellees.

OPINION

N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Police officers do not conduct a search within the

meaning of the Fourth Amendment merely by entering an

area of private, commercial property that is open to the

public. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s order

dismissing Mahesh Patel’s complaint alleging that City of

Montclair police officers violated his Fourth Amendment

rights.

BACKGROUND

Mahesh Patel owned the corporation, Hospitality

Franchise Service, Inc. (“HSF)” and the Galleria Motel, in

Montclair, California.1 As its business, the Galleria Motel

1 We have been informed by the parties that Patel passed away during

the pendency of this appeal. Therefore, the case is moot with regard to his

personal claims. See Ulaleo v. Paty, 902 F.2d 1395, 1397–98 (9th Cir.

1990). As a result, only the interest of the corporate plaintiff, HFS, may

be determined. Although corporations enjoy “some Fourth Amendment

rights,” G.M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338, 353 (1977),

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4 PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR

primarily rented rooms on an extended basis to middle-aged

and elderly low-income residents receiving public assistance. 

These residents often could not find or afford other lowincome housing.

Police officers for the City of Montclair came onto the

public areas of the Galleria Motel and cited Patel for code

violations observable in plain view. Pursuant to 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983, Patel filed a lawsuit on behalf of himself and HFS

against the City of Montclair and its police officers in 2011. 

The only allegation in the complaint (relevant to this appeal)

was Patel’s claim that the officers violated the Fourth

Amendment. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure

to state a claim. The district court granted the motion,

holding that neither Patel nor HFS had a reasonable

expectation of privacy in the areas of the Galleria Motel that

were open to the public. Patel timely appeals this

determination.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

“A dismissal for failure to state a claim pursuant to

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) is reviewed de

novo.” Gant v. Cty. of Los Angeles, 772 F.3d 608, 614 (9th

“corporations can claim no equality with individuals in the enjoyment of

a right to privacy.” United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U.S. 632, 652

(1950). The scope of a corporation’s Fourth Amendment rights is not

settled in this circuit. See Spahr v. United States, 409 F.2d 1303, 1305–06

(9th Cir. 1969) (recognizing that corporation had Fourth Amendment

rights in its own records). However, we need not decide that question in

this case. We will assume, as the question before us relates to a business

owner’s rights in the public areas of his business against routine law

enforcement, that HFS stands in the same position as its owner on this

limited question. We continue to refer to the parties as “Patel.”

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PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR 5

Cir. 2014) (citing Knievel v. ESPN, 393 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th

Cir. 2005)). “All allegations of material fact are taken as true

and construed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving

party.” Id.

DISCUSSION

We must here determine whether police officers conduct

a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment

when they come onto private, commercial property that is

open to the public. In this case, police officers entered the

public areas of the Galleria Motel and issued citations based

on code violations they observed in plain view. Patel does

not contend that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy

in the public areas of the Galleria Motel, which would be

necessary under the line of cases beginning with Katz v.

United States, 389 U.S. 347, 360 (1967) (Harlan, J.,

concurring), to state a claim for violation of the Fourth

Amendment. See California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 211

(1986) (“The touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis is

whether a person has a ‘constitutionally protected reasonable

expectation of privacy.’”) (quoting Katz, 389 U.S. at 360

(Harlan, J., concurring)). Instead, Patel contends that, under

the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in United States v.

Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), and Florida v. Jardines, 133 S.

Ct. 1409 (2013), the police officers violated his Fourth

Amendment rights by entering his property for the purpose of

conducting an investigation.

The Fourth Amendment provides “[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.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Under United States v.

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6 PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR

Jones, the government conducts a search within the meaning

of the Fourth Amendment when it “physically occupie[s]

private property for the purpose of obtaining information.” 

132 S. Ct. at 949. However, Jones does not suggest that all

technical trespasses constitute a search under the Fourth

Amendment. Instead, the Supreme Court held that “[t]he

Fourth Amendment protects against trespassorysearches only

with regard to those items (‘persons, houses, papers, and

effects’) that it enumerates.” Id. at 953 n.8. In Jones, the

Court explicitly reaffirmed the “open fields” doctrine, which

states that a mere trespassory entry onto private property does

not constitute a search. Id. at 953 (citing Oliver v. United

States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984)). As the Supreme Court

explained in Florida v. Jardines: “[t]he Fourth Amendment

does not . . . prevent all investigations conducted on private

property . . . because [open] fields are not enumerated in the

Amendment’s text.” 133 S. Ct. at 1414. Private commercial

property is not one of the enumerated items that the Fourth

Amendment protects.

Indeed, Patel has never asserted that the Galleria Motel is

within one of the enumerated areas of the Fourth

Amendment. He argues instead for a technical trespass rule

that the Supreme Court has never adopted. See Orin Kerr,

The Curious History of Fourth Amendment Searches, 2012

Sup. Ct. Rev. 67, 77 (2012) (“The Supreme Court never tied

the definition of a ‘search’ to trespass law.”). The plain

language of Jones refutes Patel’s contention: “The

Government’s physical intrusion on [a privately owned but

unenumerated] area—unlike its intrusion on the ‘effect’ at

issue here—is of no Fourth Amendment significance.” Jones,

132 S. Ct. at 953; see United States v. Mathias, 721 F.3d 952,

956 (8th Cir. 2013) (“A Jones trespassory search . . . requires

the challenged intrusion to be into a constitutionally protected

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PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR 7

area enumerated within the text of the Fourth Amendment.”). 

Accordingly, the district court did not err when it held that the

police officers’ entry onto the areas of the Galleria Motel

open to the public did not constitute a search within the

meaning of the Fourth Amendment.2

Patel makes a second, but related, argument to support his

claim. Patel contends that the Supreme Court’s decisions in

Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San

Francicso, 387 U.S. 523 (1967), and See v. City of Seattle,

387 U.S. 541 (1967), when read in conjunction with Jones,

extend the reach of the Fourth Amendment to protect against

any police intrusion into private commercial property. 

Camara and Seewere both decided approximatelysix months

before the Supreme Court decided Katz. Therefore, they

predate the Supreme Court’s efforts to standardize the Fourth

Amendment inquiry with the reasonable expectation of

privacy test. However, Camara and See are best understood

as earlier iterations of the Katz reasonable expectation of

privacy test; they do not add or detract from the scope of

Fourth Amendment protections as announced in Jones.

In Camara, the Supreme Court held that the entry of an

inspector into an area of a private business being used as a

residence constituted a search. Camara, 387 U.S. at 528–29,

532–33. The Court extended this principle in See, where the

Court held that the Fourth Amendment protected against the

search of a locked warehouse. See, 387 U.S. at 543. Both

opinions contained strong language protecting commercial

property. In Camara, the Supreme Court noted that “one

2 Again, Patel did not argue that he had a reasonable expectation of

privacy in the public areas of the Galleria Motel. See Katz, 389 U.S. at

360 (Harlan, J., concurring).

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8 PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR

governing principle, justified by history and by current

experience, has consistently been followed: except in certain

carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property

without proper consent is ‘unreasonable’ unless it has been

authorized by a valid search warrant.” Camara, 387 U.S. at

528–29. In See, the Court held that “[t]he businessman, like

the occupant of a residence, has a constitutional right to go

about his business free from unreasonable official entries

upon his private commercial property.” See, 387 U.S. at 543. 

However, these cases did not establish the broad principle

that Patel asks us to adopt in this case: that any unauthorized

entry onto private property constitutes a search.

First, Jones explicitly reaffirmed the vitality of the “open

fields” doctrine, squarely holding that some areas of private

property are not protected by the Fourth Amendment’s

prohibition on unreasonable searches. Jones, 132 S. Ct. at

953. Second, cases decided subsequent to Camara and See

indicate that they should be read to limit the reach of the

Fourth Amendment only to those areas of private property

that are not open to the public. Further, those cases have

explained the rule of Camara and See in terms of the

reasonable expectation of privacy test developed in Katz.

In Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., the Supreme Court held

that the Fourth Amendment protected against government

intrusions into the private areas of a business. 436 U.S. 307,

at 309–10 (1978). The Court’s reasoning fits squarely within

Katz: “If the government intrudes on a person’s property, the

privacy interest suffers whether the government’s motivation

is to investigate violations of criminal laws or breaches of

other statutory or regulatory standards.” Id. at 312–13

(emphasis added). “Without a warrant [the officer] stands in

no better position than a member of the public. What is

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PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR 9

observable by the public is observable, without a warrant, by

the Government inspector as well.” Id. at 315.

As in Barlow’s, the police officers entering the public

areas of the Galleria Motel are entitled to observe (without a

warrant) anything observable by the public. Camara and See

only allow a commercial property owner to manifest a

reasonable expectation of privacy in his property by closing

off portions of his business to the public.3 To extend Camara

and See any further would conflict with the language in Jones

restricting the Fourth Amendment’s protections against the

government’s trespassory actions to its enumerated items. 

Jones and Katz must be read together: Jones establishes a

default rule that a government intrusion with respect to the

enumerated items of the Fourth Amendment, regardless of a

defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy, will implicate

the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches

and seizures. Katz broadens the reach of the Fourth

Amendment beyond the enumerated areas to those areas

where the defendant manifests a reasonable expectation of

privacy.

The areas of the Galleria Motel open to the public are not

within the enumerated items in the Fourth Amendment;

therefore, no search occurs when police officers enter those

areas. Because the complaint alleged only that police officers

entered the public areas of the Galleria Motel, Patel has failed

to demonstrate a reasonable expectation of privacy pursuant

to Katz, rendering Camara and See inapplicable to this case. 

3 We do not understand the Supreme Court’s recent decision in a similar

case involving the constitutionality of a city ordinance allowing for

warrantless inspection of hotel records to hold otherwise. See City of Los

Angeles v. Patel, __ S. Ct. __, 2015 WL 2473445 (2015).

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10 PATEL V. CITY OF MONTCLAIR

Accordingly, the district court did not err when it dismissed

Patel’s Fourth Amendment claim.

AFFIRMED.

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