## Facts

- Catherine Danai, acting for PERS Travel, Inc., leased office space from Canal Square Associates under a five-year renewable lease.
- A renewal dispute led the landlord to file a complaint for possession against PERS, alleging failure to renew timely.
- Danai wrote a letter in her office, tore it up, and discarded it in her office wastebasket.
- Building staff collected trash from commercial suites and accumulated it in a locked, building-wide trash room.
- The parties stipulated that management controlled the trash room and its contents and ultimately disposed of trash off-site.
- In the trash room, a representative of the property manager searched the trash, found the torn letter, and provided it to the landlord.
- In the possession trial, the landlord used the letter to impeach Danai’s testimony regarding her understanding of the lease renewal provision.
- Danai later sued the landlord for (1) intrusion upon seclusion and (2) intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), asserting the trash search was highly offensive; she claimed she believed discarded letters would remain private.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for the landlord on the intrusion claim; Danai appealed only that ruling.

## Issues

1. Whether a tenant or corporate officer has an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in office trash once it is collected and placed in a locked, common trash room controlled by building management.
2. Whether retrieval of a torn letter from such trash can constitute intrusion upon seclusion under District of Columbia law.

## Decision

- The court affirmed summary judgment for the landlord on the intrusion-upon-seclusion claim.
- Danai lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in trash from her office once it was placed with other tenants’ trash in a management-controlled, common trash room for disposal.
- Because there was no protected privacy interest in the trash at that location and stage of disposal, the retrieval of the letter was not an actionable intrusion into a place of seclusion or private affairs.

## Legal Principles

- Intrusion upon seclusion requires an intentional intrusion into the plaintiff’s solitude or private affairs that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
- The privacy component is objective; a plaintiff’s subjective belief that information will remain private does not establish a legally cognizable expectation of privacy.
- In assessing objective privacy expectations for intrusion claims, courts may look by analogy to Fourth Amendment principles that garbage placed into a collection/disposal stream is exposed to third parties and ordinarily lacks protected privacy.

## Conclusion

The court held that office trash placed into a building’s common, management-controlled trash system is not subject to an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy; therefore, retrieving a document from that trash does not support an intrusion-upon-seclusion claim.


Danai v. Canal Square Assocs., 862 A.2d 395 (D.C. 2004)