Briggs v. American Air Filter Co.

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

We must today interpret the “extension telephone exception” to the prohibition against wiretapping and electronic surveillance contained in Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2520 (“Title III”). In particular, we must decide whether defendant-appellee William F. McClure, Jr., used a telephone “in the ordinary course of ... business” when he used it to listen to a conversation between plaintiffs-appellants Philip Briggs and Dan C. Roby.

We might wish we had planted a powerful electronic bug in a Congressional…