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Appeals court weighs whether a restaurant storage bin carried a privacy right after police retrieved appellant’s phone
Summary
At oral argument, defense and state counsel disputed whether Jay Chandler had a reasonable expectation of privacy in a labeled, plastic employee storage bin from which an employee retrieved his cellphone at the officers’ request; counsel also debated whether the employee acted as a state agent and whether exigent circumstances justified a warrantless search.
An appellate panel heard competing arguments over whether Jay Chandler had a constitutionally protected expectation of privacy in a labeled, plastic employee storage bin from which police recovered his cellphone.
Pat McN, counsel for Chandler, told the court that the trial judge correctly found an expectation of privacy in the bin and that the search was unlawful because it was effectively conducted by a state agent without a warrant. "He had his name on there," McN said, arguing that the labeled bin stored personal items and that labeling and personal use satisfy the State v. Ross factors used to assess standing and privacy.
McN also contended that Detective Chambers deputized an employee, Miss Kelso, when he asked restaurant staff to look for the phone, converting private third-party consent into state action. "She was now under the same umbrella of the constitutional provisions that Detective Chambers would have been," McN said, urging the court to view the employee's entry into the bin as a warrantless search by an agent of law enforcement.
State counsel Lacy Wilbur countered that the bins were employer-provided storage for business papers and that Miss Kelso routinely accessed the office and bins as part of her job. Wilbur said that evidence in the record shows managers and other staff had access to the office and that the employee's routine handling of bins undercuts any claim of exclusive privacy. "These bins didn't lock," Wilbur told the court, adding that the assistant administrative employee described the containers as business storage.
The parties also debated exigent circumstances. McN argued testimony about remote wiping was speculative and cited Riley v. California, saying that "speculative remote wipe concerns do not justify a warrantless search." Wilbur and the state noted officers testified they had concerns about potential remote deletion and pointed to the broader investigative context—multiple warrants and an arrest—when defending the seizure.
Both sides asked the panel to review the trial court's application of the Ross factors and whether the employee's actions should be treated as independent third-party consent or as state action. The court pressed both counsel on the practical differences between a communal area (the bench-marked "refrigerator" analogy used by a judge) and a labeled container kept for personal items.
The appellate panel recessed for about 10 minutes after extended questioning; no decision was announced at the argument.
Next steps: the court will rule after considering the parties' briefs and oral argument.
