Covey v. Assessor of Ohio County

Plaintiffs filed suit alleging that government officials violated their Fourth Amendment rights by entering curtilage in search of marijuana. The curtilage at issue here is a walk-out basement patio area attached to plaintiffs' home. The court concluded that the district court failed to construe the complaint in the light most favorable to plaintiffs when it accepted defendants' claim that their searches were reasonable because they entered the curtilage only after viewing one of the plaintiffs from a proper vantage point beyond the home's curtilage. In this case, plaintiffs have sufficiently pleaded under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics that defendants violated clearly established law under the Fourth Amendment. On remand, the district court should consider whether Heck v. Humphrey is applicable in this case. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded the district court's grant of defendants' motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). View "Covey v. Assessor of Ohio County" on Justia Law