It got me thinking about the whole argument about “domestic spying” by the NSA. Elliot Spitzer the NY General Attorney is stepping up and bringing charges against the nursing home. Isn’t having hidden cameras in the work place an invasion of privacy? How would those who think the President is wrong for authorizing domestic surveillance feel about having hidden cameras at their job?
** Isn’t having hidden cameras in the work place an invasion of privacy?**
As a legal matter? No.
How would those who think the President is wrong for authorizing domestic surveillance feel about having hidden cameras at their job?
I wouldn’t like it all that much. But I recognize the very clear and obvious difference between an employer monitoring an employee’s work activities on the job premises, and the government monitoring my conversations. I’m confident that you can, too.
I’m going to have to go back and re-read the link. Dang.
Did law enforcement do it with the cooperation of the patient/family? If so, I completely fail to see how that would require a warrant. Let’s say you’re a patient in a nursing home. You have a private room. It’s *your *right to consent to a search of the room, not the nursing home’s owners. Sort of like if you have an apartment, it’s your right to consent to a search of it, not your landlord’s.
Yes, the had permission of the patient’s family. But it’s still the private property of the nursing home owner, not the patient, and it was his employees that were being watched.
**still the private property of the nursing home owner, not the patient, and it was his employees that were being watched. **
Were the cameras installed in the patient’s room? I assume that’s the case. If so, I repeat that it’s analogous to your apartment. The complex is owned by the landlord, but the apartment is for all legal purposes pertaining to a search your private property, not the landlord’s.
Simply not true. Having a lease to a property gives you all the ownership rights you would expect, except that those rights expire, unlike the rights of an owner.
As a customer, you don’t have a lease on the room. You don’t have any rights to the real estate at all.
The employees as a condition of their employment forfeit privacy rights to their employer in return for payment. They don’t forfeit them to the patients or the state.
Do you think you could give permission to have hidden cameras installed in your operating room to snoop on the doctors in hopes of finding a path to a malpractice suit? Why not have hidden microphones while you are at it? No way.
**Do you think you could give permission to have hidden cameras installed in your operating room to snoop on the doctors in hopes of finding a path to a malpractice suit? Why not have hidden microphones while you are at it? No way. **
Probably not, but we aren’t talking about patients in a medical office or surgical room, undergoing a procedure, and then leaving. We’re talking about *residents. *I maintain that they’re situation is precisely the same as any apartment renter, legally. They rent the room, and pay for care. The room is under their control, from a legal/search perspective. I think that this is very clearly the case. I will do a quick search for related case law, which I am sure exists.
Appellants’ challenge to the legality of the apartment inspections is premised on the notion that a landlord’s right to exclude others is equal or superior to a tenant’s. That assumption is unwarranted under both the federal and state constitutions.
The United States Supreme Court has indicated that under the Fourth Amendment, tenants, not landlords, have a privacy interest in leased residences. Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 616-17, 5 L. Ed. 2d 828, 81 S. Ct. 776 (1961). In Chapman, a tenant successfully challenged a warrantless search carried out with the landlord’s consent. The court held the landlord had no authority to consent to a search of property leased to and occupied by others; the tenant enjoyed the privacy right in the leased premises, and only the tenant could waive that right. In the realm of housing code inspections, the Court reached the same result: without the tenant’s consent, a warrant was necessary to authorize an inspection of rented premises. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 18 L. Ed. 2d 930, 87 S. Ct. 1727 (1967). See also In re 728 Belmont Ave., 24 N.C. App. 17, 22-23, 210 S.E.2d 73, 77 (1974) (Camara “gives rise to the clear implication that the Supreme Court considered the Fourth Amendment privilege personal to the occupant of the place to be searched.”).
Although the issue whether a tenant may consent to a search of his or her leased apartment is one of first impression in Washington, we have previously approved the reasoning of both Chapman and Camara in the context of Const. art. 1, § 7. See State v. Mathe, 102 Wn.2d 537, 543, 688 P.2d 859 (1984); King Cy. v. Primeau, 98 Wn.2d 321, 329, 654 P.2d 1199 (1982).
Other courts considering this issue have held that tenants may consent to searches of their leased premises. «4»
They don’t rent a room. They pay for a service. It seems to me that every time I visited my old aunt in the nursing home, she was in a different room.
A renter is exactly the same as an owner. The only difference is the expiration of rights with the passage of time of the renter. The patient doesn’t have a lease with the owner.
Let’s put hidden cameras in the hospital rooms then. The patients have a right to that apparently, and I am sure the doctors wouldn’t mind. I know the lawyers would love it.
Be serious. They *live *there. It’s their permanent residence. It’s their home. If you think a court is going to decide that they don’t really have a right of consent to search the room they live in, you, my friend, have lost it.
It is not them that are being seached, vitus. It is the employees.
I don’t see how this is legal, but maybe someone can weigh in with a case.
I thought I just did.
It isn’t them or the employees being searched, really- it’s the room that’s being searched, in an attempt to find violations on the part of the employees. The resident has control over the room for this purpose- it’s the resident who can consent or refuse to allow a search of the room.
In the case I posted above, the city wanted to carry out inspections of apartments to look for code violations. The landlords objected that they, and not the tenants, had the right to deny consent for such searches, and that tenants could not lawfully give consent. They were wrong. As far as I can see, that’s exactly the legal situation in this case.
No, that is not the same situation at all. The tenant has a right to admit or refuse to admit anyone he wants, including the landlord absent provisions in the lease, under any circumstances. That call is not even close.
Next time you are in a hospital, just insist that cameras be set up. Let me know how the doctors react.
Art, these are not hospitals. These are nursing homes. The room is the residence of the patient. I say again, the room is the legal residence of the patient.
Most of these facilities are residential care facilities, not nursing homes. I’m not sure their casual names matter legally anyway.
Patients at a residential care facility do not use the room they are staying in as their address. They maintain a permenant address on file with their next of kin, or in the absence of any family, a close friend.
They do not sign any lease, nor do they have any right to claim the property as private. No more right then they would have to do so in a hotel.