Re:U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize P...
by cryptonector on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @11:40PM
(#19214581)
It's standard operating procedure for the court.
They usually make the narrowest possible decisions, only in cases they felt they had to take (usually because of disagreements below, sometimes due to time considerations), and remand to lower courts to work out details left undecided.
In this case the holding leaves very little room for the lower courts to make any decision other than that the $45k property or equivalent value must be restored to the plaintiff. I suppose Indiana might want to take the $8800 between the $1200 and the max fine ($10k), but that would invite further pointless expense and embarrassment by having their rulings overturned by Federal courts, so I would bet the plaintiff gets the $45k back. I suppose the plaintiff may want interest too, but there's not enough value in that for them, but the State will surely fight that tooth an nail, especially if the courts decide that all (or many) civil asset forfeiture cases are now to open to being revisited, as the States (or their cities) will be on the hook for enormous amounts of money, and interest on that will be a lot too.
They usually make the narrowest possible decisions, only in cases they felt they had to take (usually because of disagreements below, sometimes due to time considerations), and remand to lower courts to work out details left undecided.
In this case the holding leaves very little room for the lower courts to make any decision other than that the $45k property or equivalent value must be restored to the plaintiff. I suppose Indiana might want to take the $8800 between the $1200 and the max fine ($10k), but that would invite further pointless expense and embarrassment by having their rulings overturned by Federal courts, so I would bet the plaintiff gets the $45k back. I suppose the plaintiff may want interest too, but there's not enough value in that for them, but the State will surely fight that tooth an nail, especially if the courts decide that all (or many) civil asset forfeiture cases are now to open to being revisited, as the States (or their cities) will be on the hook for enormous amounts of money, and interest on that will be a lot too.