I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.
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They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.
Should this ever happen again, I would suggest the Institute for Justice (www.ij.org). They take on cases that do not make economical sense if it helps set precedent to help other people in the future (example: spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight a one thousand dollar civil asset forfeiture case). They have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court several times, and they rely on donations.
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.
The story is that a cop dragged a suspect into the hospital and demanded that a nurse give the patient a blood test, which is extremely illegal. The cop arrested her, but she was 100% in the right and the judge released her the next day.
I filed a nursing board complaint against the nurse, they argued that the (privately employed) nurse functions as a police for the purpose of a search therefore if they act without a warrant it's not a nursing matter but rather a police matter. I could argue it was an illegal search, but not to the nursing board, they weren't willing to consider whether the search was illegal or not, only that since the government directed the search that she wasn't acting within the capacity of her nursing license but rather in an LEO capacity. My complaint against her license was summarily closed since in their eyes whether a warrant existed was immaterial.
I also complained to the board the nurse cursed at me and called me a criminal (because I refused the 'care' that they provided anyway), but I suppose that's covered by 1A and you can verbally abuse an innocent patient all you like without any risk to your license. I don't disagree with that part of their conclusion, being an asshole isn't illegal, but it's worth noting that nursing license apparently doesn't cover verbal forms of misconduct.
So realistically although there are a few brave nurses, I would expect instead at least in my state (AZ) the nursing board will run cover for them while they perform the illegal search and then they won't have to worry about the police arresting them for non-compliance either. When I checked that same nurses license, she also had been in trouble for stealing and child neglect, that also apparently is no problem in Arizona...
No, what? Where is your argument that is meant to refute what I said? Your wife works at a hospital where a nurse was put into a similar situation, she refused, suffered personal consequences, and (presumably) the would be "patient" wasn't harmed. Sure, that nurse deserves hearty applause! If her coworkers and management supported her, they deserve applause too!
But none of that speaks to this other situation where a different nurse joined in the sadism of the cops (or at the very least was cowed into submission worrying about personal consequences), and then after a person was harmed, all of the responsible institutions have thrown up their hands and said "yup, looks good!". There's no guarantee that the laws as written support justice, and quite often it turns out that they do not. But you seem to be clinging to that idea.
The medical personnel waited to sign the charts until right after the ink went on the warrant (I requested the paperwork and the time at which the entries went in betrayed them though, the clever bastards wrote it hours earlier but then waited until the warrant was signed to actually sign it). Then as soon as the warrant was served, the hospital administration told everyone to GTFO. Their coverup was comically obvious. But since I was innocent and never charged, I never had the occasion to challenge the warrant.
As I mentioned, the same hospital system had been sued before for this same thing though and the hospital/officers won, even without a warrant. As long as you're innocent you can't do much about it since the civil suites lose and you won't be in criminal court where you can probably squash the evidence.
------- re: below (throttled) ----------
They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.