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Page Number: 112

14 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

what the questions are.  And it seems to me a few things 
can be said. 

First, the fact that a third party has access to or posses-
sion of your papers and effects does not necessarily elimi-
nate your interest in them.  Ever hand a private document
to a friend to be returned?  Toss your keys to a valet at a 
restaurant?  Ask  your  neighbor  to  look  after  your  dog 
while you travel?  You would not expect the friend to share 
the document with others; the valet to lend your car to his
buddy;  or  the  neighbor  to  put  Fido  up  for  adoption.    En-
trusting your stuff to others is a bailment.  A bailment is 
the “delivery of personal property by one person (the bailor)
to  another  (the  bailee)  who  holds  the  property  for  a 
certain  purpose.”  Black’s  Law  Dictionary  169  (10th  ed.
2014);  J.  Story,  Commentaries  on  the  Law  of  Bailments
§2, p. 2 (1832) (“a bailment is a delivery of a thing in trust 
for  some  special  object  or  purpose,  and  upon  a  contract, 
expressed or implied, to conform to the object or purpose of 
the  trust”).    A  bailee  normally  owes  a  legal  duty  to  keep
the  item  safe,  according  to  the  terms  of  the  parties’  con-
tract if they have one, and according to the “implication[s] 
from their conduct” if they don’t.  8 C. J. S., Bailments §36, 
pp.  468–469  (2017).  A  bailee  who  uses  the  item  in  a  dif-
ferent  way  than  he’s  supposed  to,  or  against  the  bailor’s
instructions, is liable for conversion.  Id., §43, at 481; see 
Goad v. Harris, 207 Ala. 357, 92 So. 546, (1922); Knight v. 
Seney,  290  Ill.  11,  17,  124  N. E.  813,  815–816  (1919); 
Baxter  v.  Woodward,  191  Mich.  379,  385,  158  N. W.  137, 
139  (1916).   This  approach  is  quite  different  from  Smith 
and  Miller’s  (counter)-intuitive  approach  to  reasonable 
expectations  of  privacy;  where  those  cases  extinguish 
Fourth  Amendment  interests  once  records  are  given  to  a
third party, property law may preserve them.

Our  Fourth  Amendment  jurisprudence  already  reflects
this truth.  In Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727 (1878), this 
Court  held  that  sealed  letters  placed  in  the  mail  are  “as