Take the Money and Run

Kudos to the California Court of Appeal for enforcing due process and the rule of law.

Earlier this month, the Court took another stand on the law of asset forfeiture by siding with people who had sued to get their stuff back.

In three separate cases, the Court ordered the trial court to reinstate lawsuits brought by eight people from whom local police had taken a total of three cars and $28,257 in cash.

In each case, after police seized the property, they didn’t refer the matter to the district attorney’s office like they were supposed to. No one from a prosecutor’s office reviewed the cases beforehand and signed off on them.

Instead, police just issued forfeiture notices themselves and left it to people to file a claim.

But you can’t do that. The law specifically authorizes only a county’s district attorney or the state’s attorney general to file a forfeiture case in court or, for property worth $25,000 or less, to issue a notice of administrative forfeiture like the police did. For more background on California’s forfeiture laws, see here.

None of the people filed claims at first, but eventually, they lawyered up and sued.

They lost in the trial court after the government argued that they didn’t file administrative claims before suing in court and that they waited too long to sue when they did.

But they won on appeal. The Court ruled that the government failed to comply with the forfeiture statutes, so the forfeitures were invalid to begin with, and the state had no right to their property. The Court had made this point three years ago in a prior opinion, and apparently, it meant what it said.