Short Circuit 420 | A Lease for the Girlfriend
From Short Circuit by Institute for Justice
March 20, 2026 · 48 min
About this episode
The episode discusses a probation case involving a lease that protected a girlfriend's apartment from warrantless searches and explores the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Evan Lisull of IJ tells us of a guy on probation who seems to have been pretty clever with his living arrangements. The police often don’t need a warrant to search the residence of a person on probation. In this case from the Fourth Circuit, the guy owned two properties, one of which he seemed to have lived at and the other of which he allowed his girlfriend to live in. But the girlfriend didn’t just hang out there, she had a lease with him. That lease, it turned out, was key to the court ruling the government should have got a warrant before it searched her apartment and seized thousands of dollars in cash. It’s a rare loss in a civil forfeiture case for the government. Then we go to the Eleventh Circuit where IJ’s John Korevec explains the ins-and-outs of the Federal Tort Claims Act. We explore new wrinkles on how to sue the federal government and the exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions when doing so. Finally, we finish with a review of the Fourth Circuit as part of our #12Months12Circuits series. Register for “The Other Declarations of 1776” conference on April 10! U.S. v. Perez Doe v. U.S. Bound By Oath episode on the FTCA
People in this episode
Guests: Evan Lisull, John Korevec
Topics covered
- probation
- civil forfeiture
- Federal Tort Claims Act
- court rulings
- living arrangements
- search warrants
- legal exceptions
Keywords
- probation
- search warrant
- civil forfeiture
- Federal Tort Claims Act
- Fourth Circuit
- Eleventh Circuit
- legal rights
- court case
- living arrangements
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Institute for Justice
Books & works: Bound By Oath
Places: Fourth Circuit, Eleventh Circuit, U.S., Doe
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