United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
579 F.3d 989 (2009)
Major League Baseball and its players' union ran a confidential drug-testing program administered by Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. (CDT) (defendant). Investigating a separate steroid-distribution case, the government learned ten players had tested positive and subpoenaed all of CDT's player records; while CDT's motion to quash that subpoena was pending, the government instead obtained a warrant limited to those ten players' records, with conditions requiring on-site review where feasible, review by independent computer specialists rather than case agents, and prompt return of anything outside the warrant's scope. When agents executed the warrant, they seized hundreds of players' records well beyond the ten named in the warrant.
Whether the plain view doctrine allows government agents to retain electronic data they saw only incidentally while segregating material covered by a warrant from data outside the warrant's scope.