Somebody was denied a job at a hospital, and complained to the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff’s Office who sought a search warrant for the letter received that apparently caused the job denial. A judge pro tem issued the search warrant but got the letter and sealed it for the regular judge who ordered the search warrant quashed and the letter returned. The hospital had standing because it owned the letter. In re Matter under Investigation, 15-0509 (La.App. 3 Cir. Nov. 4, 2015) (unpublished):
In addition, when ruling on standing, “it is both appropriate and necessary to look to the substantive issues … to determine whether there is a logical nexus between the status asserted and the claim sought to be adjudicated.” Chicago Tribune Co. v. Mauffray, 08-522, pp. 7-8 (La.App. 3 Cir. 11/5/08), 996 So.2d 1273, 1279 (quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 1021 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1953 (1968)).
It is clear that JALH [the hosptial] has standing in this matter. It is the owner of the seized documents. “[A]n owner may seek return of seized property in the criminal proceeding even where the owner is not a defendant.? Delta Retail 45, L.L.C. v. Cox, 44,873, p. 5 (La. App. 2 Cir. 10/28/09), 26 So.3d 200, 204, writ denied, 09-2580 (La. 2/5/10), 27 So.3d 304. Moreover, JALH has an interest at stake in litigation which can be legally protected. Louisiana Revised Statutes 13:3715.3(A)(2) states that records of peer review committees of any medical organization:
[S]hall be confidential wherever located and shall be used by such committee and the members thereof only in the exercise of the proper functions of the committee and shall not be available for discovery or court subpoena regardless of where located, except in any proceedings affecting the hospital staff privileges of a physician, dentist, psychologist, or podiatrist, the records forming the basis of any decision adverse to the physician, dentist, psychologist, or podiatrist may be obtained by the physician, dentist, psychologist, or podiatrist only. Louisiana Revised Statutes 13:3715.3 “was designed to protect the confidentiality of hospital peer review committee records.” Gauthreaux v. Frank, 95-1033, p. 1 (La. 6/16/95), 656 So.2d 634, 634. In that JALH is seeking to recover documents that are defined as confidential by statute, it is clear that it has standing to recover said property. This assignment of error is devoid of merit.
A search of the jurisprudence of this State finds that prosecutions for criminal defamation are few and far between, to say the least. It is clear from the record that the Jefferson Parish District Attorney is not going to prosecute this matter as directly stated to the trial court by the District Attorney. Further, it is clear from reading the warrant issued that the affidavit it was issued upon was full of Mr. Ellender‘s mere conclusions about an opinion allegedly contained in a reference letter, rather than fact. The United States Supreme Court held that “[s]ufficient information must be presented to the magistrate to allow that official to determine probable cause; his action cannot be a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 915, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3416 (1984) (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 239, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2333 (1983)).
Moreover, the pro tem judge who issued the warrant almost immediately sealed the documents seized, evidencing that even he had concerns about the legality of the warrant, which sought information that was clearly protected by law. Ultimately, the pro tem judge who issued the warrant basically placed the matter on hold for the regular trial judge to return. It is clear that the trial judge who quashed the warrant would never have granted the warrant in the first place.2
2. The trial court noted in his reasons for judgment that if a search warrant were issued under the circumstances of this case, then search warrants would be requested every time someone did not receive a job or loan based on an allegedly bad review.
Sending this matter back to him in any capacity would only result in the same disposition after further waste of time and money. Based on the scant record before us, we can find no abuse of the trial court‘s discretion in making that finding, in quashing the warrant, or in returning the documents. Therefore, the decision of the trial court is affirmed.
Note: And, one could easily surmise that a criminal defamation case violates the First Amendment.
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
