Mccabe v. Life-line Ambulance Service: Another Extension of the Over-extended Administrative Search Exception - Anne Tunnessen

• Citation: Vol. 48 No. 3
• Publication year: 1997

McCabe v. Life-Line Ambulance Service: Another Extension of the Over-Extended Administrative Search Exception

In McCabe v. Life-Line Ambulance Service,¹ the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit extended the administrative search exception to the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches. The suit alleged a novel violation of the ban in the form of a warrantless involuntary commitment procedure. However, the court found that the procedure fit neatly within the exception and declined to extend Fourth Amendment protection to involuntary commitments.²

I. Factual Background

Mrs. Zinger, a Lynn, Massachusetts resident with a long history of mental illness and high blood pressure, threatened her ex-husband and disturbed the other tenants in her building.³ On September 6, 1989, a licensed psychiatrist signed an application for a ten-day involuntary commitment pursuant to Massachusetts law,⁴ based on reports from her family and neighbors.⁵ At the same time, Zinger's family attempted to have her evicted from her apartment.⁶ On the morning of September 7, the constable charged with the eviction learned of the commitment order and arranged to meet at the apartment with the local police officers who were to carry out the order that afternoon.⁷ Accompanied by an ambulance crew, the constable and the police officers first knocked on Mrs. Zinger's door, then kicked it in when there was no response.⁸ Mrs. Zinger, alarmed at the presence of the police, tried to close the door, but they detained her. She suffered a fatal heart attack after she was handcuffed, forcibly carried to the ambulance, and strapped face down on a stretcher.⁹

Mrs. Zinger's administratrix, McCabe, filed a claim under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 against the City of Lynn, alleging that the City's policy authoriz-ing police officers to use forcible, warrantless entries into residences to execute commitment orders in the absence of exigent circumstances deprived Mrs. Zinger of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches.¹⁰ Following a hearing, the court granted McCabe's cross-motion for summary judgment on the issue of liability against the City.¹¹ In the subsequent trial, the jury awarded $850,000 in damages against the City and $500,000 against the ambulance service.¹² The City appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed, holding the search reasonable under the administrative search exception.¹³

II. Legal Background

Over the last forty years, the United States Supreme Court has developed the administrative search exception to the general require-ment of a warrant to avoid violation of the Fourth Amendment. The exception balances the particular needs of the searching entity, usually the government, with the privacy rights of the individual being searched. The exception was first enunciated in Frank v. Maryland,¹⁴ when the Court held that an ordinance could give the administrative arms of government the right to a limited inspection of property without a warrant when required by special needs, such as health and safety.¹⁵ Tracing the history of the Fourth Amendment to a reaction against warrantless searches for criminal evidence and citing the long tradition of city health and safety inspections, the Court determined that the public good accomplished by inspections outweighed any minimal privacy invasion.¹⁶ The Court said that the balancing of public and private interests was appropriate in these special areas.¹⁷

Less than ten years later, in 1967, the Supreme Court overruled the Frank decision in Camara v. Municipal Court¹⁸ and See v. City of

Seattle.¹⁹ Finding that Frank wrongly restricted Fourth Amendment protections solely to people suspected of criminal activity, the Court in Camara determined that even in the health and safety realms, the relaxation of the warrant requirement for inspections was too broad.²⁰ Instead, a warrant for an administrative search should be sought if a citizen refused an inspector entry, unless there had been a citizen complaint or there was another "satisfactory reason for securing immediate entry."²¹ The Court balanced the long tradition of health and safety inspections, the public benefit, and the search's limited intrusion against the privacy interests to find the necessary reasonable-ness.²² Probable cause for a warrant would "exist if reasonable legislative or administrative standards for conducting an area inspection are satisfied with respect to [the] particular dwelling."²³ In See, the Court held that for searches of businesses, an inspector, in the absence of consent, would also need a warrant.²⁴ However, licensing programs that require preliminary inspections were not included.²⁵

Three years later, the Supreme Court applied the administrative search exception to statutorily mandated visits by welfare officials to recipients' homes in Wyman v. James.²⁶ The Court characterized such visits not as searches that would fall under the Fourth Amendment, but rather as interviews.²⁷ Assuming that the visits had indeed been searches, the Court held they were reasonable based on the public interest in caring for the recipients' children, the protection of the public trust of taxpayers' money, the proper interest a charitable agency has in its clients, the emphasis of the controlling statute on a close relationship with the recipient, and the statute's detailed rules limiting visits to daytime and only after advance notice.²⁸ Furthermore, the fact that the visits were not made by the police demonstrated that they were carried out for welfare and not for prosecution.²⁹ The Court discounted the need for a warrant in such situations: in order to obtain a warrant, the welfare official would need to establish a more compelling need than seeing the child in the home, which would defeat the purpose of the visit.³⁰ Finally, the Court distinguished Frank, Camara, and See because those defendants were faced with potential criminal charges, whereas Mrs. James faced only the cessation of benefits, which while valuable, were not constitutionally guaranteed rights.³¹

In the five years following Camara and See, the Supreme Court developed another facet of the administrative search exception: the "closely regulated business" exception. In this version of the exception, the legislature grants search power through a statute to a governmental regulatory agency. In Colonnade Catering Corp. v. United States³² and United States v. Biswell³³ the Court acknowledged that certain industries (in these cases, liquor and firearms) had long histories of governmental regulation that permit Congress to authorize warrantless inspections through specific statutes.³⁴ The Court distinguished See, in which the inspectors were trying to discover things that could not be concealed in a short amount of time, from Biswell and Colonnade, in which, if the inspections were to be effective, they had to be unan-nounced.³⁵ In balancing the public interest of apprehending lawbreak-ers against the privacy rights of the business, the Court reasoned that the dealers had chosen and benefitted from their regulated businesses and knew that tight regulation would prevail.³⁶ Thus, the dealers gave implied consent to searches by merely entering into such businesses.³⁷

In Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc.,³⁸ decided several years later, the Court declined to extend the closely regulated business exception to all businesses subject to Occupational Safety and Health Act ("OSHA") inspections.³⁹ The Court stated that the exception rarely applied, and that the fact that a business engaged in interstate commerce, and thus fell under the OSHA statute, did not render it closely regulated.⁴⁰ The Court reiterated the Camara standard for probable cause, which requires that the agency show that it chose the business to be searched based on standards in accordance with the statute,⁴¹ and determined that the efficacy of the search would not be hampered by procuring a warrant under such a relaxed definition.⁴²

The Supreme Court then extended and altered the closely regulated business exception in Donovan v. Dewey.⁴³ In that case, the Court determined that the federal interest in protecting health and safety conditions in the mining industry, and the deleterious delaying effect of a warrant requirement, justified a statutory system of warrantless inspections.⁴⁴ The Court distinguished Marshall because the statute at issue there was not tailored closely enough and "devolve[d] almost unbridled discretion upon executive and administrative officers."⁴⁵ Conversely, in Donovan, the statute satisfied the exception because it was well-tailored and its detailed nature eliminated the exercise of raw discretionary power by inspectors.⁴⁶ The Court rejected "closely regulated business's" older definition of a long history of regulation in favor of a classification based on the intensity of regulation, regardless of duration.⁴⁷

In New York v. Burger,⁴⁸ the Court announced a three-part test for determining the validity of an administrative search statute in a closely regulated industry. First, there must be a substantial governmental interest "that informs the regulatory scheme pursuant to which the inspection is made."⁴⁹ Second, the procurement of a warrant must defeat the success of the inspection by, for example, taking too much time or alerting the intended target.⁵⁰ Finally, the statute's inspection...