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Nature of Suit Code: 240
Nature of Suit: Torts to Land
Cause of Action: 

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FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

APR26 2005 

PATRICK FISHER 

Clerk 

RONNIE ROSS, LINDA ROSS, 

husband and wife; RICHARD ROWE, 

ANGELA ROWE, husband and wife; 

LISA EZELL, a single woman; 

BARRY TALLEY, CHERYL 

TALLEY, husband and wife, 

Plaintiffs - Appellants, 

and 

LUTHER BAGWELL, LORRA 

BAGWELL, husband and wife; GARY 

SELPH, PENNY SELPH, husband and 

wife; GEORGE GHEGAN, BECKY 

GHEGAN, husband and wife; 

CHRISTOPHER ALBRECHT, 

KAREN ALBRECHT, husband and 

wife; GARY BALL, LISA BALL, 

husband and wife; WILBUR BALL, 

LAURA BALL, husband and wife; 

GARRET CLARK, a married man; 

MONTE MCKINNEY, a single man; 

JEWELL FOSHEE, KRYST! 

FOSHEE, husband and wife; HAMA 

BARRETT, RITA BARRETT, 

husband and wife; DENVER FORAN, 

BEYERL Y FORAN, husband and 

wife; AFDREW SELPH, 

MARGARET SELPH, husband and 

wife, 

Plaintiffs, 

V. 

No. 04-6146 

(D.C. No. 03-CV-188-L) 

(W.D. Okla.) 

Appellate Case: 04-6146 Document: 010110614697 Date Filed: 04/26/2005 Page: 1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Defendant - Appellee. 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before SEYMOUR, McCONNELL, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined 

unanimously to grant the parties' request for a decision on the briefs without oral 

argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.l(G). The case is therefore 

ordered submitted without oral argument. 

I. Discussion 

The United States Air Force operated Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma 

City for decades. Tinker AFB became one of the military's largest, and was a 

central location for aircraft maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, these 

operations generated substantial volumes of hazardous waste, including toxic 

solvents such as trichloroethylene (TCE). The Air Force's practice beginning in 

the 1940s until the 1980s-as was the practice of most industrial concerns-was 

This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the 

doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court 

generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order 

and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

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to bury the waste in unlined pits or other storage areas on the property. No 

special precautions were taken to prevent the waste from migrating to local 

neighborhoods. 1 

Plaintiff-appellants are individual residents and landowners in Tinker View 

Acres located near the Base. Plaintiffs' complaint was filed in federal court under 

the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U .S.C. § l 346(b )(1) (FTCA), and is based on 

Oklahoma negligence and property law. It alleges that the government created a 

public and private nuisance when it generated hazardous waste at the Base and 

then allowed the waste to permeate the ground water and migrate to their 

property. The primary waste complained of is TCE. "TCE is a toxic organic 

solvent, known to be used by the military as a degreasing agent." Aragon v. 

United States, 146 F.3d 819, 822 (10th Cir. 1998). Plaintiffs contend that the 

government failed to properly dispose of the waste, failed to stop the pollution, 

and issued untimely and inadequate warnings. They further argue that the 

pollution damaged their property values and may have caused unspecified 

personal injuries. 

In response to plaintiffs' complaint, the government filed a motion to 

1 Congress responded to hazardous waste concerns in the 1970s and 1980s by 

enacting more stringent environmental laws such as CERCLA (Comprehensive 

Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act), 42 U.S.C. § 9601 et 

seq., and RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act), 42 U.S.C. § 6901 et 

seq., that now cover most federal facilities. 

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dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, citing the discretionary function 

exception to the FTCA and the various federal statutes and regulations under 

which officials at the Base operated. The district court granted the motion, and 

the plaintiffs appeal. Because we agree with the district court that the activities 

complained of are shielded by the discretionary function exception to the FTCA, 

we affirm. 

A. 

The Federal Tort Claim Act generally removes the protection of sovereign 

immunity for the government in cases where government employees have caused 

damage by their negligence during the course of their employment. Excluded 

from this waiver of immunity, however, are so-called discretionary acts. Thus, 

"the waiver of immunity does not apply to 'any claim ... based upon the exercise 

or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or 

duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether 

or not the discretion involved be abused."' Kiehn v. United States, 984 F .2d 

1100, 1102 (10th Cir. 1993) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a)). To determine 

whether discretionary conduct applies, we employ a two-step analysis, Berkovitz 

v. United States, 486 U.S. 531, 536-37 (1988), ::.11d review de novo the district 

court's application of the exception. Aragon, 146 F.3d at 823. 

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B. 

The first step under Berkovitz involves a threshold determination that the 

government's challenged conduct was done pursuant to "a federal statute, 

regulation, or policy [that] specifically prescribes a course of action for an 

employee to follow." Berkovitz, 486 U.S. at 536. Plaintiffs conceded that no 

such statute is involved in this case, and therefore the government's actions are 

considered discretionary. 

C. 

We thus move to the second step of the Berkovitz analysis. This requires us 

to decide "whether the exercise of judgment or choice at issue 'is of the kind that 

the discretionary function exception was designed to shield."' Aragon, 146 F.3d 

at 823 (quoting Berkovitz, 486 U.S. at 536). The exception shields only 

government decisions based on public policy, id., and the very existence of a 

government regulation giving government employees discretion "creates a strong 

presumption that a discretionary act authorized by the regulation involves 

consideration of the same policies which led to the promulgation of the 

regulations." United States v. Gaubert, 499 U.S. 315, 324 (1991 ). Our inquiry 

here must focus on the nature of the government's a.::tions "and on whether they 

are susceptible to policy analysis." Id. at 325. 

As the district court recognized, our decision in this case is controlled by 

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Aragon v. United States, 146 F.3d 819 (10th Cir. 1998). In Aragon, the plaintiffs 

made nearly identical claims to the ones brought here. Landowners who lived 

nearby Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico, claimed that Air Force 

operations generated TCE contamination which polluted their residential water 

wells. In affirming dismissal of the landowners' pollution claims, we concluded 

the FTCA discretionary function exception applied. Our analysis focused not on 

the policies surrounding groundwater protection, but on the "broader policies 

affecting airbase operations." 146 F.3d at 826. We admitted to "little doubt" that 

the decisions surrounding the operation of an airbase "involve[] policy choices of 

the most basic kind." Id. The broader public and military policies at issue 

allowed the Air Force "to place security and military concerns above any other 

concerns," including-unfortunately-concerns about hazardous waste disposal. 

Id. We thus affirmed the district court's dismissal for lack of subject matter 

jurisdiction. 

Recognizing their jurisdictional problem created by Aragon 's interpretation 

of the discretionary function exception, the plaintiffs redirect our attention 

elsewhere: the government's efforts to warn the neighborhood about TCE 

pollution. They do nci. specifically allege an absence of warning; rather, they 

argue that the warnings they did receive were "untimely and inadequate." Again, 

we agree with the dist~ict court that the policy choices surrounding the warnings 

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given ( or the delayed issuance thereof) are likewise shielded by the discretionary 

function exception. 

We turn to our decision in Daigle v. Shell Oil Co., 972 F .2d 1527 (10th Cir. 

1992), to resolve this claim. In Daigle, the plaintiffs, also neighbors to a military 

base, sued over the cleanup of chemical munitions and other toxic waste stored at 

the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. One of their claims 

involved the alleged failure of the Army to warn them of impending toxic air 

emissions during cleanup activities. Id. at 153 8. In response to this argument, we 

held that "'[a] decision [about a failure to warn] that is a component of an overall 

policy decision protected by the discretionary function exception also is protected 

by this exception."' Daigle at 1542 ( quoting Zumwalt v. United States, 928 F .2d 

951,955 (10th Cir. 1991)). 

Plaintiffs' inadequate warning claim thus fails here for the same reasons the 

duty to warn claim failed in Daigle: the procedures involved in deciding when 

and how much to tell plaintiffs about the TCE contamination at the Base implicate 

similar policy concerns to those involved in the overall cleanup. These 

governmental decisions are grounded in policy discretion and, as such, are 

shielded by the discretionc.ry function exception to the FTCA. 

Plaintiff-appellants attempt to distinguish Daigle by arguing that the failure 

to warn was a '"nondecisicn' that was never considered or attended to at all," 

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Aplt. Br. at 19, and thus should not be protected by the exception. This court, 

however, previously has rejected a similar formulation of a failure to warn claim. 

In Kiehn v. United States, 984 F.2d 1100 (10th Cir. 1993), we concluded: 

[I]t is unnecessary for government employees to make an actual 

conscious decision regarding policy factors. In fact, we have found 

it irrelevant whether the alleged failure to warn was a matter of 

deliberate choice or a mere oversight. The failure to consider some 

or all critical aspects of a discretionary judgment does not make that 

judgment less discretionary and does not make the judgment subject 

to liability. 

984 F .2d at 1105 ( applying discretionary function exception)( quotations and 

citations omitted). 

Here, the record shows that the Air Force in fact decided to conduct a study 

before commencing cleanup operations to determine the pervasiveness of the TCE 

problem and to consider remediation options. Government officials made no 

decision one way or the other about whether to notify the neighboring residents of 

the contamination problem. After deciding on a cleanup plan, the Tinker View 

neighbors were notified of the proposed operation, and, for the first time, learned 

of the extent of the TCE contamination. This is the same type of conduct that 

implicates policy considerations under Daigle and Kiehn. Thus, even if "a matter 

of deliberate choice or a mere oversight," Kiehn, 984 F .2d at 1105, the failure to 

warn claims here are barred by the discretionary function exception. 

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II. Conclusion 

In conclusion, plaintiffs' complaint is barred by the FTCA's discretionary 

function exception. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is 

AFFIRMED. 

Entered for the Court 

Timothy M. Tymkovich 

Circuit Judge 

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