7th Circuit uphold dismissal of gun accessory manufacturer’s complaint

The owner of a firearm accessories manufacturing facility in southern Indiana who claimed his rights against search and seizure were violated when federal agents raided his business got a lesson on the Federal Rules of Evidence and the importance of precedent from the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2017, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, accompanied by Indiana State Police, executed a search warrant on Paraklese Technologies LLC in Georgetown. The company makes accessories for firearms including solvent traps, which are cleaning devices that attach to guns and can be illegally converted to silencers.

During a two-hour search, agents seized $21,000 worth of solvent traps. Also, they warned Paraklese owner, Ronald Fosnight, that he would lose his federal firearms license if he continued to sell the solvent traps.

Fosnight responded by filing a lawsuit that invoked Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), and raised claims under the Fourth Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

The Southern Indiana District Court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and the 7^th Circuit affirmed in Ronald D. Fosnight and Parkalese Technologies, LLC v. Robert Jones, et al., 20-1033.

Describing Fosnight’s appellate brief as “rambling and hard to follow,” the circuit panel said “as best we can tell,” his primary challenge was to the district court’s decision to take judicial notice of the search warrant.

The panel concluded the warrant authorizing the search “dooms the Bevins claims from the get-go.”

First, the 7^th Circuit pointed to Rule 201(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which permits a court to take judicial notice of facts that “can be accurately and readily determined from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.”

Then, the appellate court cited precedent that allows judges to take judicial notice of matters of public record when ruling on a motion to dismiss.

“In short, the complaint is simply devoid of any allegations that might plausibly rebut the presumptive validity of the search or support any inference that the agents committed a constitutional violation while executing the warrant,” Chief Judge Diane Sykes wrote. “According, the complaint failed to allege a constitutional violation that could possibly form the basis for a Bivens action against any of the agents.”