United States v. Lantis, No. 20-8031 (10th Cir. 2021)
Annotate this CaseMark Lantis set off on a day hike in Yellowstone National Park to search for buried treasure. He would get lost in the wilderness and was rescued by helicopter late the next day. Based on these events, a magistrate judge found Lantis guilty of a misdemeanor: reckless disorderly conduct under 36 C.F.R. 2.34(a)(4). Lantis appealed, arguing that the magistrate judge applied an objective standard for reckless conduct, without also assuring that the subjective component of recklessness was met. To this, the Tenth Circuit disagreed: "the magistrate judge did not apply only an objective standard; he simply relied on circumstantial evidence of Lantis’s state of mind and the obviousness of the risk to conclude that Lantis behaved recklessly by consciously disregarding a risk that he was aware of. Accordingly, we affirm."
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.