Florida/Georgia Personal Injury & Workers Compensation

...hority in the supervisors or other Beverage Department officers to make searches of the place of business, without search warrant, was for the purpose of enforcing the beverage and cigarette tax laws. No other laws are mentioned. Appellee also cites Section 562.41, F.S.A....

...[7] See, for example, §§ 561.29 (license revocation), 562.32 (criminal penalties), 562.28 (seizure), and 562.16 (personal tax liability for violations), Fla. Stat. (1975). [8] § 561.55, Fla. Stat. (1975). [9] §§ 562.07 and 561.54, Fla. Stat. (1975). [10] §§ 562.20 and 561.55, Fla. Stat. (1975). [11] Section 562.41, Florida Statutes (1975), authorizes searches by Division employees, and other law enforcement officers, for the purpose of detecting violations of the Beverage Law....

...of an agency shall be construed to extend no further than the particular powers and duties conferred by the same statute. Section 120.536(1) contains identical language. [3] Contrast, for example, the explicit power given law enforcement officers by section 562.41, Florida Statutes (1995), to conduct warrantless searches of premises where alcoholic beverages are sold, as well as the provision therein that such licensees consent to searches and inspections without warrants.

...enter the office without a search warrant. Although the officers have proposed several bases for their alleged entitlement to enter into the back office to search for Wail, none of those bases is legally supportable. The officers attempt to rely on section 562.41, Florida Statutes, as justifying a right to search the gas station, including the back office....

...ys be subject to be inspected and searched without search warrants by the authorized employees of the division and also by . . . police officers during business hours or at any other time such premises are occupied by the licenses or other persons." § 562.41(1), (5), Fla....

...of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco of the Florida Department of Business Regulation. The complaint alleges that, acting under color of state statutes authorizing inspections and searches to enforce beverage tax laws, see §§ 561.07, 561.29(2), and 562.41(1)(2) and (5), Fla.Stat.Ann., the defendant violated the plaintiffs’ rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, in violation of the fourth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution....

...544 (D.Conn. 1970). An action such as the one at bar, however, is not cognizable in the federal courts without an independent violation of a right protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. The plaintiffs argue that Florida Statute § 562.41(3) and (4) are the state counterparts to the federal statute at issue in Colonnade, and thus the fourth amendment becomes jurisdictionally applicable....

...�� (page 7); “[h]is wholesale rummagings through the nooks and crannies of CELLARMASTER’S premises for hours at a time were clearly beyond the scope of the inspections contemplated by this statutory scheme” (page 7); “[njeither § 561.07 nor 562.41 authorizes general searches of the premises and seizures of personal effects or any other materials located during a search” (p....