GA: Mistake in address not prejudicial where right place was searched; police used address listed with Assessor

The search warrant had a mistaken address. It authorized the search of the plaintiff’s building but listed it as 11195 when it was actually 11193. The wrong building was not searched. Plaintiff did not state a claim for trespass by the officers. The Assessor [likely off their website] provided the address, but the building was marked different. Qenkor Constr. v. Everett, 2015 Ga. App. LEXIS 468 (July 15, 2015):

The search warrant at issue was for a building “[l]isted with the Board of Assessors of Chattooga County” as being located at 11195 Highway 27, Summerville; as being “[NGCS], owned by Sandra Weaver”; as being a “[c]ommercial building located across Highway [27] from McDonald’s restaurant and described as: a single level building with rock appearance halfway up front and gray vinyl siding top front with gray shingle roof, bearing signs in the window reading ‘Tax Service.'” (Emphasis supplied.) The record shows that QCI’s offices were, in fact, located in the building described in the warrant. Accordingly, even though the building had been partitioned and QCI had begun using an address that was not listed in the county tax records, the search warrant allowed police to search QCI’s offices.

A search warrant for a multi-unit structure will be valid, even if it fails to specify the particular sub-unit to be searched, “where (1) there is probable cause to search each unit; (2) the targets of the investigation have access to the entire structure; or (3) the officers reasonably believed that the premises had only a single unit.” Fletcher v. State, 284 Ga. 653, 655 (3) (670 SE2d 411) (2008) (punctuation and footnote omitted). Although the warrant will be considered valid under any one of these scenarios, in this case all three circumstances were present. First, the warrant allowed police to search and seize the customer files and financial records, including the bank and payroll records, of QCI. Weaver had access to QCI’s bank accounts and served as the company’s accountant and may have been providing those services through NGCS. Thus, as the affidavit in support of the warrant reflects, there was probable cause to believe that the evidence sought could be found in either the QCI offices or the NGCS offices. Additionally, Weaver, who was one of the targets of the investigation, had access to the entire structure, as evidenced by the fact that she had keys to both the interior and exterior doors used to access QCI’s space. Finally, despite QCI’s use of the 11193 address, law enforcement had a reasonable belief that the building at issue was in fact a single unit. In this regard, the record shows that Weaver had owned the building since 1995; that until approximately August 2009 (less than one year before the search), the building had been a single unit; that in 2009 interior modifications were made that divided the building into two units; that Weaver never informed the tax assessor’s office of the change in her building; that although QCI had installed a mailbox on its side of the building, had placed the address 11193 on the mailbox, and began using 11193 as its business address, 11193 was never recognized as an address for tax assessment purposes; that no evidence shows that the 11193 street address existed prior to August 2009; and that both the building and the lot on which it was situated were listed in the relevant public records as having the address 11195.

In light of the foregoing, we find that the warrant authorized the police to search the entire building in which QCI’s offices were located, including the space occupied by QCI. See U. S. v. Bradley, 644 F3d 1213, 1266 (III) (A) (1) (d) (11th Cir. 2011) (although the warrant referred to the building as bearing the name of a specific company (Seratech) “the warrant’s invocation of Seratech merely described the building to be searched. It did not restrict the agents’ search to the premises known as or controlled by Seratech. Instead, the warrant permitted the search of the entire building so long as the agents reasonably believed they would find ‘[i]tems to be seized’ [under the warrant] in the location of their search.”) (Emphasis in original.) Thus, Everett’s conduct in executing the warrant cannot support a claim for trespass, and the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment to Everett on this claim.