A Modern Day John Adams, Fighting for your Rights

In the small village of Endicott, located in Upstate New York, we find Lloyd Knecht III, a man who is fed up with “the government under President George W. Bush and Congress trampling on citizens’ rights for the past eight years.” Rather than sitting still in the face of continued outrages, Knecht is striking a blow for liberty and personal freedom. How is he doing this, you may ask? By refusing to let those damned firemen come in to his heating and air conditioning business and conduct fire and safety inspections without a warrant. And he was inspired to do so by the recent HBO mini-series on John Adams.

The HBO miniseries about President John Adams is part of the reason Lloyd Knecht III decided against allowing the Endicott Fire Department to inspect his heating and air-conditioning business this year.

Knecht said the inspection was an unreasonable search of his property, but a jury disagreed.

They found Knecht guilty of violating village code regarding annual fire inspections and fined him $50,000. Knecht’s attorney, Kevin Guyette, said the decision is being appealed to Broome County Court. Guyette said he has no comment on the fine, but instead is arguing the village code is a violation of his client’s Fourth Amendment rights.

Once we get past the somewhat humorous nature of this story it becomes worthwhile to examine whether or not plaintiff has a leg to stand on here. Common sense would seem to dictate that fire and safety inspections are part and parcel of our social fabric, but regular observers of the courts know all too well that “common sense” and “judicial procedure” rarely collide in the same sentence. So where have our jurists come down on this question in the past?

It turns out that the Supreme Court has a long, colorful history in dealing with 4th amendment issues and safety inspections. It dates back to the 1959 Frank v. Maryland ruling, wherein the court found that “householders were bound to admit inspectors not armed with warrants.” This finding seemed to be supported in National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab (1989) which, oddly enough, was a case based on questions surrounding mandatory drug testing of public employees. The court went further in their ruling, however, determining that “other governmental agencies, such as housing, fire, health, welfare, and safety inspectors,” also have searching capabilities, and these powers “have a lesser standard than probable cause and often invoke an element of surprise” such as may be required in public inspections.

All of this would sound like bad news for Mr. Knecht, except the rulings didn’t pass the test of time. More recently, the Supremes heard Camara v. Municipal Court and See v. City of Seattle, where they overturned the Frank ruling in each case, and “forbade punishment of those who refuse to admit warrantless inspectors.” So, good news for our modern day John Adams, n’est-ce pas?

Not quite. Each of the recent findings notes that the 4th amendment specifies the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects. The common theme is that these protections are in place for citizens in their homes. The bar to be met for businesses is considerably lower, possibly resting below sea level. A householder is seen as controlling the access to their home, with no person being legally allowed inside without their consent and the owner assuming the brunt of responsibility for what transpires therein. Business, on the other hand, are presumed to be open to the public and the government’s need to ensure the safety and security of those visitors trumps the assumed 4th amendment rights of the owner.

So, we salute Mr. Knecht for his libertarian styling and willingness to poke a finger in the eye of authority, but this will likely turn out to be an expensive lesson in constitutional law for him and his attorney. Keep up the fight, though!