Also known as: safety deposit box · safe-deposit box · safe deposit box
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A secure container rented from a financial institution for the storage of valuables and important documents. Access is limited to the renter or authorized persons through a key or combination system maintained by the institution.
Scott Summers, counsel for a robbery suspect, removed cash and a handgun from the client's apartment. Summers placed the items in a new safety-deposit box at a local bank to keep them from investigators. Police later traced the box to Summers, who faced charges for obstructing justice because the privilege covers only communications and not physical evidence hidden by counsel.
Farkas purchased mutual fund shares and executed declarations naming Williams as beneficiary. The certificates were issued in Farkas's name as trustee and stored in his safety-deposit box. After Farkas died the certificates were found there, and the court examined whether the declarations created valid inter vivos trusts.
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Police investigating a theft at Western Vault obtained warrants and searched multiple safety-deposit boxes listed as unrented. Officers recovered $264,900 in cash from one box. The seizure became central to later proceedings examining the scope of the search and press coverage of the investigation.
Couch operated a restaurant and kept business records in a safety-deposit box rented in her name. The IRS issued a summons for the records to the bank. Couch asserted a Fifth Amendment privilege, but the Court held that the records in the box were not protected because they were held by a third party.
Officers executed a warrant at Andresen's law office and seized files and documents. The warrant also authorized a search of a safety-deposit box containing related papers. Andresen challenged the seizure on Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds, arguing the documents were protected.
The Sherrers obtained a divorce decree in Florida after a brief residency. Mrs. Sherrer had placed personal papers in a safety-deposit box in the state before filing. Mr. Sherrer later attacked the decree's validity in Massachusetts, raising questions of full faith and credit and domicile.
Yes. A defendant who intentionally obtains a freeze and turnover order directed at a safety-deposit box causes dispossession when the marshal seizes and holds the contents, depriving the owner of access for an extended period.
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Yes. Moving the coins without consent and denying access for months amounts to trespass to chattels and possibly conversion because the advisor intentionally interfered with the owner's possessory interest.
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Yes. When the branch manager is held at gunpoint in the lobby, contents removed from boxes in a nearby secure room accessible only by the manager's code are within the manager's immediate presence under the common-law definition.
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No. The location of the remaining pages after selective burning does not change the analysis. Intent to revoke only the burned portion is shown by preserving the rest of the document intact.
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…in hand and personally present them to the Government agents. Where the Government takes private records from, for example, a safety deposit box against the will of the owner of the documents, the owner has been compelled, in my view, to incriminate himself within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment." 409 U. S., at 337 n.…