Court Opinion

ID: 9740338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:32:41.069331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:17.546895
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(concurring). A garbage can is not a safety-deposit box. It is not an alternative place of safekeeping. Rather, it is a place for discarding waste materials. Abandonment derives from the owner’s knowledge that the discarded materials may be picked up by trash collectors five minutes later — or five hours or five days. The writer would see the test, not where on the property the garbage container awaits the trash collector’s visit, but whether it is placed so as to be available for pickup. That the trash barrel here was at the rear of the home does not place it beyond the trash collector’s pickup servicé, unless it is established that garbage and trash collectors in the community involved made only curbside pickups. In the case before' us, the trash collectors surely had the right to entry on the premises to remove the contents of garbage and trash containers standing to the rear of the house. On this record, as to the search of the trash barrel, the writer would find no *669“reasonable expectation of privacy” reached, much less disturbed. Where, as to such search, the majority finds harmless error, the writer would find no error at all.