Tennessee v. Gibbons

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge.

Police seized Thomas Patterson’s truck after Patterson allegedly used it to drive a friend to a drug deal. While awaiting a civil-forfeiture hearing, Patterson filed this suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, arguing that the seizure was unconstitutional. But the seizure had occurred in the Eastern District of Tennessee, where most defendants, witnesses, and Patterson himself lived—but where Patterson’s lawyer, Herbert Moncier, had been suspended for professional misconduct, had not been reinstated, and thus was not eligible to…