Opinion ID: 1188407
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: fitting-room surveillance

Text: (4a) Deborah also contends that the second petition, charging theft from a Broadway store, cannot be sustained. She urges that by watching her in the Broadway fitting room from the adjacent corridor, Laskowski, the store security guard, searched without probable cause, unconstitutionally. She seeks suppression of the fruits of Laskowski's observations, including the stolen merchandise subsequently recovered outside the store. We find it unnecessary to decide whether prearrest searches by private-store detectives raise constitutional issues or whether the exclusionary rule can be applied to evidence obtained in a search of that kind. (Cf. People v. Zelinski, supra, 24 Cal.3d 357, 365-368; People v. Triggs (1973) 8 Cal.3d 884, 891-892 [106 Cal. Rptr. 408, 506 P.2d 232], disapproved on other grounds, People v. Lilienthal (1978) 22 Cal.3d 891, 896 [150 Cal. Rptr. 910, 587 P.2d 706].) The trial court apparently ruled that no search occurred here because Laskowski's observations did not infringe Deborah's reasonable expectation of privacy. [6] The record provides substantial, factual support for that determination. (See People v. Rios (1976) 16 Cal.3d 351, 357 [128 Cal. Rptr. 5, 546 P.2d 293]; People v. Superior Court (1974) 10 Cal.3d 645, 647, 649-650 [111 Cal. Rptr. 565, 517 P.2d 829]; People v. Lawler (1973) 9 Cal.3d 156, 160 [107 Cal. Rptr. 13, 507 P.2d 621].) (5a) Law enforcement officials make a search within the purview of constitutional prohibitions only when they jeopardize an individual's expectation of privacy that society has recognized as justified. There is no reasonable expectation with regard to objects or events in plain view from a public place where the observer has a right to be. ( Lorenzana v. Superior Court (1973) 9 Cal.3d 626, 634 [108 Cal. Rptr. 585, 511 P.2d 33]; People v. Bradley (1969) 1 Cal.3d 80, 84 [81 Cal. Rptr. 457, 460 P.2d 129]; People v. Lovelace (1981) 116 Cal. App.3d 541, 548 [172 Cal. Rptr. 65]; see Katz v. United States (1967) 389 U.S. 347, 351-353 [19 L.Ed.2d 576, 581-583, 88 S.Ct. 507].) (4b) The record indicates that the fitting rooms at the Broadway store open off a three-foot-wide corridor. Each is about four by five feet square in area and has a door about three feet high from bottom edge to top edge, with approximately two-foot gaps above and below. Thus the door's design allows substantial portions of the small room's interior to be seen from the corridor. When Laskowski began to suspect Deborah she followed her into the corridor, watching as she entered a fitting room and closed the door. On cross-examination she testified that Deborah hung her purse or shopping bag on the doorknob, then placed it on the floor and began stuffing it with clothing taken from the rack. Counsel pressed for an admission that Laskowski had seen this by walking up to the door, then stretching or bending to peer over or under it. Though susceptible to varying interpretations, Laskowski's answers sustain the inference that once placed on the floor the purse or bag was visible to a person standing normally in the corridor and was seen from such a position. [7] It appears that this was the dispositive basis of the trial court's ruling. Seeking suppression, Deborah's counsel argued that [t]here is an expectation of privacy when one enters into a dressing room and closes the dressing room because the courts have held that that person upon entering the dressing room has an expectation of privacy; that a security officer looking into the room thereafter violates that expectation of privacy.... The judge responded that he knew of a case where a guard had looked into a dressing room with a slatted door; a suppression motion had been overruled there because there was no expectation of privacy. Though counsel and the judge also discussed differences between government and business security forces, we think the expectation-of-privacy doctrine was an independent reason why the judge denied the suppression motion here. [8] (5b) What constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy depends on the circumstances and is measured by common habits in the use of domestic and business properties. (E.g., North v. Superior Court (1972) 8 Cal.3d 301, 308-312 [104 Cal. Rptr. 833, 502 P.2d 1305, 57 A.L.R.3d 155]; People v. Lovelace, supra, 116 Cal. App.3d 541, 550; People v. Sneed (1973) 32 Cal. App.3d 535, 540 [108 Cal. Rptr. 146].) (4c) The fitting room here adjoined a narrow common corridor through which customers and salesclerks must have passed frequently. They would not always keep strictly to the center of the passageway, and slight deviations must have brought them close to the fitting-room doors. The large gaps above and below the doors provided an obvious view of the interior of each room. Though designed perhaps to give minimal protection to modesty, the doors hardly could promote any reasonable feeling that all actions and objects behind them were insulated from public observation. Citing People v. Triggs, supra, 8 Cal.3d 884, counsel suggests that fitting rooms, like public restrooms, are zones of complete privacy regardless of their construction or the means of observation. But Triggs held only that a public restroom gives rise to a reasonable expectation of freedom from observation by a law enforcement officer who has assumed a clandestine, unexpected vantage point to spy indiscriminately on all who enter. In those circumstances it does not matter that a stall's construction offers little privacy from normal view or that the officer could have seen the interior from a place open to the public. (Pp. 891-892; see also Britt v. Superior Court (1962) 58 Cal.2d 469, 471-472 [24 Cal. Rptr. 849, 374 P.2d 817]; Bielicki v. Superior Court (1962) 57 Cal.2d 602, 605-607 [21 Cal. Rptr. 552, 371 P.2d 288]; People v. Metcalf (1971) 22 Cal. App.3d 20, 22-24 [98 Cal. Rptr. 925].) [9] The only California decision suggesting a limitation on surveillance of fitting rooms also involved observation from a hidden and unusual position. People v. Randazzo (1963) 220 Cal. App.2d 768 [34 Cal. Rptr. 65] concluded (in dictum) that police could not have watched a fitting room by lying on the floor of an adjacent cubicle to peer through a narrow gap below the dividing partition. (Pp. 769-770; cf. People v. Moreno (1976) 64 Cal. App.3d Supp. 23, 29-30 [135 Cal. Rptr. 340].) Retailers face a shoplifting epidemic. (See U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Security and the Small Retailer (1979) p. 11; Merchants' Responses, supra, 28 Stan.L.Rev. 589.) The fitting rooms they often provide for customer convenience and modesty are particularly suited to concealment of stolen property. One way to fight that problem is to provide facilities that shield intimate body parts but are not entirely hidden from view. In effect, counsel asks us to hold that stores may not use evidence obtained by their employees' normal-view observations through fitting room doors whose design and location almost invite inspection. (5c) (See fn. 10.) That rule would comport with neither common habits in the use of property nor wise policy. [10] One who uses a dressing room is entitled to the modicum of privacy it appears to afford. The record here supports the inference that Deborah placed the purse or bag on the floor of the room, where it was seen in full view of any passing customer, salesclerk, or security guard. No constitutionally recognized expectation of privacy proscribes that observation, and it appears that the trial court so ruled. Thus no ground appears for disturbing its order denying suppression of the evidence obtained.