Court Opinion

ID: 9471190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:26:40.176457+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:18.271344
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Chief Judge,
specially concurring.
I concur in the result on the ground that when the defendant surrendered his privacy to Poteat he also surrendered it with respect to anyone that Poteat might deal with, within the parameters of the surrender. Poteat could have entered the apartment himself, secured the phony bill, and then delivered it to a television commentator and would have violated no privacy right of Schuster. Schuster surrendered his privacy to Poteat and took his chances on what Poteat might do with the bill. Whether Poteat acted wrongly in letting the agent enter the apartment and himself pick up the bill might arguably, on tort grounds, make the government agent guilty of trespass and subject him to suit by the owner of the apartment. But it does not follow that the agent’s possible trespass against the owner violated the privacy of Schuster in the bill because Schuster had surrendered that privacy to Poteat and necessarily to persons with whom Poteat dealt.
This seems to me a preferable rationale than a plenary rule that consent to one person operates as a consent to the whole world, or at least to the entire world of law enforcement officers.