## Facts

- IRS and FBI agents investigated SDI Future Health, Inc. (a closely held corporation) and its co-founders, Todd Stuart Kaplan and Jack Brunk, for alleged Medicare and tax fraud.
- A federal search warrant authorized a search of SDI’s business premises in Las Vegas for records and electronic data connected to specified fraud-related offenses.
- Agents executed the warrant and seized large quantities of paper and electronic business materials from SDI’s offices.
- SDI, Kaplan, and Brunk were later indicted on health-care fraud and related charges.
- Kaplan and Brunk moved to suppress seized evidence, arguing the warrant lacked Fourth Amendment particularity and that agents seized items beyond the warrant’s scope.
- The government argued Kaplan and Brunk lacked standing to challenge a search of corporate premises and records.
- The district court granted suppression in substantial part, finding Kaplan and Brunk had a reasonable expectation of privacy in SDI’s offices and that the warrant was overbroad.

## Issues

1. Whether corporate officers and part-owners had a reasonable expectation of privacy sufficient to challenge a search of corporate premises and records.
2. Whether the warrant was facially overbroad or insufficiently particular under the Fourth Amendment when authorizing seizure of business records in a complex fraud investigation.
3. Whether the search execution exceeded the warrant’s scope and, if so, whether suppression should be wholesale or limited to unlawfully seized items.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded.
- The court narrowed standing: Kaplan and Brunk could challenge the search only as to their own offices and other areas over which they showed a personal, reasonable privacy interest, not the entire facility or all corporate records.
- The court rejected the district court’s conclusion that the warrant was facially overbroad in its entirety, holding much of it was sufficiently particular when read practically and as a whole.
- The court required a more targeted suppression analysis on remand, tied to (i) the narrowed standing and (ii) which warrant provisions or seizures, if any, were unconstitutional or outside the warrant’s scope.

## Legal Principles

- Fourth Amendment rights are personal; a defendant must show a personal and reasonable expectation of privacy in the place searched or items seized and cannot assert privacy interests vicariously.
- High-level officers of a closely held corporation may have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a corporate office or specific work areas, assessed by factors including control and supervision, exclusive access, security measures (locks/passwords), and workplace privacy policies.
- The particularity requirement is applied in a commonsense, practical manner, with attention to the nature of the suspected criminal activity; complex fraud investigations may justify broader record categories if constrained by suspected offenses and related limiting features (such as time periods and subject-matter links to specified crimes).
- Catch-all warrant language that is not sufficiently tethered to specific offenses and limiting criteria may be constitutionally suspect and can require partial suppression.
- Over-seizure during execution does not automatically require suppression of all evidence; courts generally suppress only items seized under unconstitutional warrant portions or outside the warrant’s scope, absent a sufficiently flagrant search warranting broader suppression.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that corporate founders could challenge a workplace search only for areas where they personally had a reasonable privacy expectation, upheld much of the business-records warrant as adequately particular for a fraud investigation, and remanded for item-specific suppression findings consistent with those limits.


United States v. SDI Future Health, Inc., 568 F.3d 684 (9th Cir. 2009)