United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc.

The Major League Baseball Players Association (the players) entered an agreement with Major League Baseball whereby the players would be drug tested and the results would be kept confidential. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. (CDT) (defendant) collected the samples from the players and kept a list of players and their drug test results. The federal government was investigating a company suspected of giving professional baseball players steroids. The government found out that ten players had tested positive in the CDT program and got a subpoena for all records and specimens CDT had from the players. CDT moved to quash the subpoena. Before a ruling on the motion to quash, the government got a warrant to search the records of the ten players suspected of testing positive for drugs. In its affidavit for the search warrant, the government detailed the difficulties of collecting electronically stored data. The judge issuing the warrant gave the government power to search subject to conditions that required the government to first determine if the records of the ten players could reasonably be searched on-site, that agents trained in searching electronic data (computer personnel) who were not involved in the investigation conduct the initial review of the data, and that data determined to fall outside the terms of the search warrant be returned in a reasonable amount of time. However, the government seized hundreds of records when it executed the warrant.