Sean Kendall v. Brett Olsen, et al.

This Court and numerous courts of appeals have held the “emergency aid” exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment requires objectively reasonable cause to believe that a person in need of aid is in a house or curtilage to be searched. The primary question presented in this case is: When police are searching for a missing child, is there an exception to the “emergency aid” doctrine that permits police to search any curtilages that might have been accessible to the missing child in the entire area the child might have wandered, even when there is no reasonable cause to believe the child is in any particular curtilage to be searched?

Did the lower courts err in deeming as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment a police officer’s warrantless search and consequent seizure of a pet dog by shooting it where (1) the reasonableness of the seizure and the search that led to it was challenged by substantial evidence directly disputing the evidence upon which the district court relied in granting the motion for summary judgment and (2) the officer created what he claims to have been justifying exigent circumstances?