Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_07-cv-06396/USCOURTS-cand-4_07-cv-06396-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 315
Nature of Suit: Airplane Product Liability
Cause of Action: 28:1441 Petition for Removal

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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 At the hearing on June 19, 2008, the Court granted Defendants'

motions to stay discovery and for a protective order pending

its ruling on the jurisdictional question. Because the motion

to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is denied,

these orders are hereby vacated. 

United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

DEBORAH GETZ, et al.,

Plaintiffs,

 v.

THE BOEING COMPANY, et al.,

Defendants. /

No. CV 07-6396 CW 

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS'

MOTION TO DISMISS, LIFTING

DISCOVERY STAY AND VACATING

PROTECTIVE ORDER 

Defendant Honeywell International, Inc. moves to dismiss

Plaintiffs' complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,

arguing that Plaintiffs' claims are nonjusticiable under the

political question doctrine. Defendants Boeing Company and

Goodrich Pump and Engine Control Systems, Inc. have joined in

Honeywell's motion. Plaintiffs Deborah Getz, Rodney Thomas, Mary

Duffman, Sophia Duffman, Christine Vaughn, Brad Vaughn, Jill Garbs,

Doug Garbs, Jordan Lanham, Jerry Goldsmith, RyAnne Noss, Timothy

Brauch, Chris Trisko and Mark Daniel Houghton oppose the motion. 

Having considered all of the papers filed by the parties and the

oral argument on June 19, 2008, the Court DENIES without prejudice 

Defendants' motion to dismiss.1

 

BACKGROUND

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On February 17, 2007, a United States Army Special Operations

Aviation Regiment MH-47E Chinook helicopter bearing Tail #94-00472

crashed in the Zabul Province of Afghanistan. All twenty-two

individuals on board the helicopter were military personnel. 

Plaintiffs are five survivors of the crash, one survivor's wife and

the heirs of four service people who were killed. Defendants are

companies that designed, assembled, manufactured, inspected,

tested, marketed and sold the helicopter, its component parts and

related software and hardware.

The following facts regarding the details of the crash are

taken from the Army Regulation 15-6 Report of Proceedings by

Investigating Office/Board of Officers (Army Report), attached as

Exhibit A to the Brandi Declaration submitted in support of

Plaintiffs' opposition. Included in this report are the findings

of the Army's Investigative Office (Investigative Findings), as

well as numerous attachments, such as aircraft maintenance reports,

autopsy reports, weather forecasting data, voice transcripts of

pilot communications, aircrew sworn statements and aircraft manual

extracts. The Army Report is heavily redacted and uses a number of

undefined abbreviations and terms. 

The United States Army 160th Special Operations Aviation

Regiment (SOAR), the unit operating the helicopter at the time of

the crash, specializes in low-level night flying during combat and

rescue missions. On the day of the accident, the unit was

returning to its base in Bagram, Afghanistan along an "established

flight corridor" with two other helicopters after a mission to

"drop . . . off personnel to capture/kill someone in the al-Qaeda

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2

 Because the Court's copy of the Army Report has no

numbering system with which to identify each witness

statement, the Court will use the time each interview was

conducted to distinguish between the statements. Defendants

use reference numbers for pages in the Army Report that do

not appear in the exhibit submitted to the Court. 

3

network" was cancelled. Army Report, Investigative Findings, 3(b);

Sworn Witness Statement taken at 11:09, at 1.2

 According to one

eyewitness report, when the crew informed their commander that the

mission had been cancelled and they were planning to return to

base, the commander "agreed that [they] should recover to Bagram." 

Id., Sworn Statement taken at 14:30, at 1. The helicopter took off

after a Performance Planning Card was completed, indicating that

the aircraft could perform the mission, and the crew received two

favorable weather forecasts. Id., Investigative Findings, 3(c);

Sworn Statement taken at 14:30, at 1. Sixty-four minutes into the

flight, the aircraft crashed, killing eight and injuring the

remaining fourteen people on board. Id., Investigative Findings at

1(a), 2(e). 

According to the Army Report, "the preponderance of evidence

indicates that the primary cause of the accident was the sudden

catastrophic failure of the number two engine." Id. at 1(c). The

Army Report's Investigative Findings indicate that "the single

remaining operational engine could not provide the power required

to maintain sustained flight." Id. However, the MH47E Operator

Manual suggests that continued flight may have been possible with

only one working engine. Id., MH47E Operator Manual, section 

9-2-7. According to the Army Report's findings, the pilot's

decision to enter an "avoid" range of 400 feet, rather than to

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descend to a lower altitude, may have made continued flight

impossible. Id., Investigative Findings, at 4(f)(2-3). The Army

Report lists a number of possible reasons why the pilot did not

descend to a lower altitude, including the fact that he "lost all

primary instrumentation in the last few seconds of flight," that

the "standby instrument displays [were] poorly located," and that

he "had no visual references" because of poor weather conditions. 

Army Report, Investigative Findings, at 4.

Although the root cause of the helicopter's engine failure has

not yet been determined, investigators have ruled out Foreign

Object Damage (FOD). Id. at 3(f). Moreover, Army investigators

found no evidence of friendly or hostile fire in the "relatively

benign . . . valley" over which the helicopter was flying at the

time of the crash. Id. at 3(a). Although the Army Report's

Investigative Findings rule out icing damage as a possible cause of

the accident, the witness reports uniformly mention seeing serious

icing on the aircraft right before the crash. Id. at 3(e), Sworn

Statement taken at 9:50, at 1 ("I turned my lip light on and

discovered icing on the minigun"), Sworn Statement taken at 9:52,

at 1 ("I noticed precipitation coming in from the window and trace

amounts of icing on the lower FOD screen of the number two

engine"), Sworn Statement taken at 10:00, at 6 ("Heavy/severe icing

to the point of 'ghost' terrain painted on radar display"). 

The Army Report also lists several factors that may have

contributed to the severity of the accident, including "a potential

component and or system failure of the engine fuel system, poor

weather (WX) forecasting and monitoring capabilities in

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Afghanistan, . . . and improper pilot inputs." Id. at 1(c). 

Witness Reports focus especially on the failure of the weather

forecasting in predicting what one passenger called "the worst

weather conditions I have encountered in 20 years." Id., Sworn

Statement taken at 10:00, at 6. The Army Report's Investigative

Findings state that "the unforecast weather requirements were a

significant contributing factor and had a profound impact on how

the PIC [pilot in command] reacted to the situation." Id.,

Investigative Findings, at 4(b). The Investigative Findings

reported no evidence, however, that "the inaccurate weather

forecasts and observations were due to human error." Id. at 3(d).

There is no evidence that the mission was poorly planned or

that the unit failed to maintain the equipment properly. Id. at

3(b),(g). The engine was only seven months old, and had shown no

signs of weakness in any prior flight crew inspection. Id. at

3(g). However, there had been past reports of other engine

failures on Chinook aircraft prior to this incident. Id. at

4(a)(1).

Alleging that the defective design and production of engine

number two was the primary cause of the crash, Plaintiffs are

seeking monetary damages from Defendants for wrongful death, bodily

injuries, and loss of consortium based on the legal theories of

negligence, strict product liability, and breach of express and

implied warranty.

LEGAL STANDARD

Dismissal is appropriate under Rule 12(b)(1) when the district

court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the claim. Fed. R.

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Civ. P. 12(b)(1). Subject matter jurisdiction is a threshold issue

which goes to the power of the court to hear the case. A federal

court is presumed to lack subject matter jurisdiction until the

contrary affirmatively appears. Stock West, Inc. v. Confederated

Tribes, 873 F.2d 1221, 1225 (9th Cir. 1989). 

A Rule 12(b)(1) motion may either attack the sufficiency of

the pleadings to establish federal jurisdiction, or allege an

actual lack of jurisdiction which exists despite the formal

sufficiency of the complaint. Thornhill Publ’g Co. v. Gen. Tel. &

Elecs. Corp., 594 F.2d 730, 733 (9th Cir. 1979); Roberts v.

Corrothers, 812 F.2d 1173, 1177 (9th Cir. 1987). In the latter

circumstance, "the court holds broad authority to order discovery,

consider extrinsic evidence, and hold evidentiary hearings in order

to determine its own jurisdiction." Rosales v. United States, 824

F.2d 799, 803 (9th Cir. 1987).

EVIDENTIARY OBJECTIONS

In their opposition, Plaintiffs object to the evidence

submitted by Defendants on the basis of lack of authentication,

hearsay and lack of foundation. The Herman Declaration filed in

support of Defendants' motion contains newspaper articles (Exs. 1,

3, 5-7), press releases (Exs. 2, 8), a 160th Special Operations

Aviation Regiment media advisory (Ex. 4), a memorandum from the

Placer County Board of Supervisors (Ex. 9), an Air Force casualty

report (Ex. 10), biographical sketches published by the public

affairs office of the 75th Ranger Regiment (Ex. 11-13), and a

United States Department of State Fact Sheet (Ex. 14). All these

exhibits, except exhibit ten, are inadmissible because they are

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hearsay and lack foundation. 

The Declaration of Marlin Kruse was also filed in support of

Defendants' motion. Kruse, who states that he is a head engineer

at Honeywell, declares that he saw first-hand the number two engine

from the subject helicopter. Mr. Kruse's statement in paragraph

twelve regarding information he heard from 160th investigators is

hearsay and is inadmissible. His statement in paragraph thirteen

that he could see grenade impact to the engine lacks foundation and

is speculative, and is therefore also inadmissible. The remainder

of his declaration will be considered.

DISCUSSION

Defendants allege that Plaintiffs' claims raise a

nonjusticiable political question over which the Court has no

subject matter jurisdiction. In Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court

established six independent tests for determining whether a case

involves a nonjusticiable political question. 369 U.S. 186, 217

(1962). A case may be dismissed on political question grounds if

and only if "one of these formulations is inextricable from the

case at bar." Id. 

A political question is implicated when there is:

(1) a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the

issue to a coordinate political department;

(2) a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards

for resolving it;

(3) the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy

determination of a kind clearly for nonjusticiable discretion;

(4) the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent

resolution without expressing lack of the respect due

coordinate branches of government;

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(5) an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political

decision already made;

(6) the potential of embarrassment from multifarious

pronouncements by various departments on one question.

369 U.S. at 217. 

 Plaintiffs suggest that the Court apply a summary judgment

standard to decide Defendants' Rule 12(b)(1) motion. Plaintiffs

cite a Ninth Circuit medical malpractice case, Rosales, 824 F.2d at

803, which held that when "the jurisdictional issue and substantive

claims are so intertwined that resolution of the jurisdictional

question is dependent on factual issues going to the merits, the

district court should employ the standard applicable to a motion

for summary judgment." If the moving party then fails to meet the

summary judgment standard, "the intertwined jurisdictional facts

must be resolved at trial by the trier of fact." Id. 

Plaintiffs argue that the Court should dismiss their claims

only if Defendants establish that there are no material facts in

dispute. This standard, however, cannot be applied to a political

question dispute. A political question arises, by definition, when

jurisdictional and substantive claims are "so intertwined" that the

court will have to consider evidence regarding the jurisdictional

issue at trial. Baker, 369 U.S. at 217. In order to decide

whether a political question exists, the Court must determine if it

can resolve all disputed facts without implicating one of the six

Baker tests. Because Plaintiffs' proposed procedure would require

the Court to evaluate any disputed evidence at trial, its adoption

could result in the Court reviewing nonjusticiable claims. Thus,

the Rosales procedure is not applicable to this case.

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 In order to determine whether a political question is

implicated in this case, the Court must address the Baker tests by

applying "a discriminating analysis of the question posed, in terms

of the history of its management by the political branches, of its

susceptibility in the light of its nature and posture of the

specific case, and of the possible consequences of judicial

action." Baker, 396 U.S. at 211-12. 

I. Textual Commitment to a Coordinate Branch

The Constitution textually commits to Congress the power to

raise and support the Army, and to the Executive branch the power

to command it. See U.S. Const. Art. 1, § 8, cls. 11-16; U.S.

Const. Art. II, § 2; Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U.S. 1, 10 (1973).

However, "it is clear that not even military judgments are

completely immune from judicial review." McMahon v. Presidential

Airways, Inc., 502 F.3d 1331, 1358 (11th Cir. 2007); see also

Baker, 369 U.S. at 211 ("[I]t is error to suppose that every case

or controversy which touches foreign relations lies beyond judicial

cognizance."); Gilligan, 413 U.S. at 11-12 ("[I]t should be clear

that we neither hold nor imply that the conduct of the National

Guard is always beyond judicial review.").

Koohi v. United States, 976 F.2d 1328, 1332 (9th Cir. 1992) is

the only Ninth Circuit case that addresses the political question

issue as it relates to tort claims arising from military activity. 

The Koohi court concluded that a negligence claim against the

United States military and a strict product liability claim against

the manufacturers of the military's air defense system for injuries

incurred when the Army shot down a misidentified Iranian Airbus

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carrying civilian passengers did not implicate a political

question. The court found that it was "fully empowered to consider

claims . . . resulting from military intrusions into the civilian

sector." Id. at 1331-32 (quoting Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 15-16

(1972)). The court also explained, "A key element in our

conclusion that the plaintiffs' action is justiciable is the fact

that the plaintiffs seek only damages [not injunctive relief] for

their injuries." Id. at 1332. Nevertheless, the court dismissed

all the claims as barred under the "combatant activities" exception

to the Federal Tort Claims Act. Id. at 1333-36. 

Defendants attempt to distinguish the instant case from Koohi

by arguing that the passengers on the Chinook helicopter were all

soldiers who had voluntarily assumed the risks associated with

military activity. However, although the Ninth Circuit held that

"those decisions [which] cause injury to civilians" are

"particularly" reviewable, it did not state that injuries to

members of the armed forces were necessarily nonjusticiable. Id.

at 1331. Although Koohi has been interpreted to mean that

"civilians injured at the hands of the military do not raise

political questions, [but] soldiers injured at the hands of the

military raise political questions," Bentzlin v. Hughes Aircraft

Co., 833 F. Supp. 1486, 1490 (C.D. Cal. 1993), courts in other

jurisdictions have held that claims arising from injuries to

soldiers are justiciable. See e.g., Norwood v. Raytheon Company,

455 F. Supp. 2d 597, 608 (W.D. Tex. 2006); Lessin v. Kellogg, Brown

& Root, ___ F. Supp. 2d ___, 2006 WL 3940556, *8 (S.D. Tex. 2006); 

Carmichael v. Kellogg, Brown & Root Services, Inc., 450 F. Supp. 2d

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1373, 1376 (N.D. Ga. 2006); McMahon, 502 F.3d at 1331. Therefore,

Plaintiffs' status as soldiers, although relevant, is not

dispositive.

At the time Koohi was decided, neither the Supreme Court nor

any Court of Appeals had dismissed a suit brought against a private

party on the basis of the political question doctrine. 976 F.2d at

n.3. However, as Defendants note, the Ninth Circuit, in Corrie v.

Caterpillar, Inc., 503 F.3d 974, 982 (9th Cir. 2007), dismissed as

raising a political question a war crimes claim against a private

manufacturer who sold bulldozers, funded by the United States

government, to the Israel Defense Forces for the purpose of

bulldozing homes in the Palestinian Territories. Therefore, the

fact that Defendants are private parties is also not dispositive.

Plaintiffs emphasize that, like the plaintiffs in Koohi, 976

F.2d at 1332, they are requesting monetary damages, rather than

injunctive relief. This fact, too, is relevant, but not

dispositive. Koohi did not hold it dispositive and, as Defendants

note, there are cases in this circuit and others that were found

nonjusticiable even though the plaintiffs were requesting only

monetary damages. See e.g., Bentzlin, 833 F. Supp. at 148; Atkepe

v. United States, 105 F.3d 1400, 1402 (11th Cir. 1997); Whitaker v.

Kellogg, Brown & Root, Inc., 444 F. Supp. 2d 1277, 1281 (M.D. Ga.

2006). 

Because there are no Ninth Circuit cases addressing the

justiciability of soldiers' tort claims against a military

contractor, the Court will consider the reasoning of other circuit

and district court cases that have decided this issue. According

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to the majority of these cases, the key inquiry is whether a court

will have to consider the wisdom of military operations and

decision-making, or whether it need only consider the private

contractor's performance. See McMahon, 502 F.3d at 1358. The

court must make this determination by considering both "how the

plaintiffs might prove their claims and how [the defendants] would

defend." Lane, 2008 WL 2191200 at *12. 

The following cases applied this standard, and found that the

plaintiffs' claims were nonjusticiable. In Bentzlin, 833 F. Supp.

at 1497, a court in the Central District of California dismissed

for lack of subject matter jurisdiction a products liability claim

brought by families of soldiers against a missile manufacturer

arising from the alleged misfiring of an Air Force missile,

reasoning that "no trier of fact can reach the issue of

manufacturing defect without eliminating other variables which

necessarily involve political questions, . . . [such as] military

strategy and, more specifically, orders to . . . pilots and ground

troops." Similarly, in Smith v. Halliburton, ____ F. Supp. 2d

____, 2006 WL 2521326, *24 (S.D. Tex. 2006), a Texas district court

dismissed a negligence claim brought by injured soldiers against a

private contractor that arose from a suicide bombing at a military

dining hall in Iraq because it would involve evaluation of "the

intelligence gathering, risk assessment and security measures

implemented by the military" to determine whether the contractor

hired to serve food at the facility was responsible for the attack.

See also Zuckerbraun v. General Dynamics Corp., 755 F. Supp. 1134,

1142 (D. Conn. 1990) (finding that in order to evaluate the alleged

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failure of the anti-missile system that the plaintiffs claimed

resulted in the deaths of thirty-seven Navy sailors, the court

would have to "examine the appropriateness of the rules of

engagement and the standing orders, which are committed to the

executive branch"). 

On the other hand, in Norwood, 455 F. Supp. 2d at 604, a Texas

district court held that the adjudication of a product liability

claim brought by American and German soldiers against a radar

manufacturer for injuries which allegedly arose due to the

plaintiffs' prolonged exposure to radiation emitted from the system

would not implicate military decision-making, because it "would not

involve inquiries into rules of engagement [or] reactions of United

States servicemen during combat," and "the government contractor

defense will likely prevent any scrutiny by the Court of the United

States Armed Forces' acquisition and use of the radar system." 

Similarly, in McMahon, 502 F.3d at 1361, the Eleventh Circuit

upheld the district court's finding of no political question,

because it found that the court could resolve a soldier's

negligence claims against a government contractor hired to provide

air transportation during combat missions in Afghanistan without

examining "the military's discrete areas of responsibility," which

included the "start and end points of the flights, when the flights

would be flown . . . the working hours of . . . pilots, . . .

minimum requirements for the aircraft, and . . . minimum and

maximum amounts of passengers and cargo."

 Several courts have been reluctant to dismiss claims at an

early stage of discovery before "it is certain whether inquiries

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into military decision-making would be necessitated by Plaintiff's

claims." Carmichael, 450 F. Supp. 2d at 1376 (finding that at the

early stage in discovery it was "impossible to say" whether a

soldier's negligence claim against an independent government

contractor arising from a traffic accident in Iraq would involve a

nonjusticiable political question). In Lane, 2008 WL 2191200 at

*7, the Fifth Circuit found that although the "plaintiffs'

negligence allegations move precariously close to implicating the

political question doctrine," the district court should not have

dismissed on this ground without some showing that unforeseeable

military decision-making rendered the defendant government

contractor's actions reasonable in the circumstances. See also

Lessin, 2006 WL 3940556 at *8 (finding that although a soldier's

injuries occurred during a transport mission in Iraq, the "limited

facts" available provided no evidence of the military's

contribution to "essentially, a traffic accident, involving a

commercial truck . . . as well as a civilian truck driver").

Here, as in Norwood, 455 F. Supp. 2d at 604, and McMahon, 502

F.3d at 1361, based on the current record, the Court may be able to

decide Plaintiffs' claims without considering military decisionmaking. Although evidence in the record demonstrates that there

was icing and low visibility at the time of the crash, there is no

evidence that military personnel ordered the aircraft to fly in

unfavorable conditions, and, in fact, prior to take-off, two

weather forecasts were obtained so that the aircraft would not fly

under hazardous conditions. Id., Investigative Findings, 3(c). 

Moreover, although the military planned the aircraft's route, there

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is no evidence that this decision contributed to the crash. The

record shows that the aircraft was flying along an "established

flight corridor" over a "relatively benign" valley. Id. at 3(b),

3(a). 

Similarly, evidence of the pilot's decision to ascend rather

than immediately land the helicopter will not necessarily require

consideration of the military's role in training and communicating

with its aircrew. There is as yet no evidence in the record to

suggest that the pilot's actions were the result of inadequate

training or a lack of communication. In fact, the Army

Investigators found that "highly experienced" pilots could not have

landed under similar conditions for a number of plausible reasons. 

Finally, unlike in Bentzlin, 833 F. Supp. at 1497, Smith, 2006 WL

2521326 at *24 and Zuckerbraun, 755 F. Supp. at 1142, where the

courts found that they would have to examine the enemy and friendly

fire that caused the plaintiffs' injuries, here, the record shows

"no evidence of enemy or friendly fire." Army Report,

Investigative Findings, 3(a). 

Defendants list other hypothetical considerations that may

implicate Army decision-making, including the gross weight on the

helicopter at the time of the crash, possible violations of

standard operating procedure, or modifications that the Army may

have made to the helicopter prior to take-off. As McMahon held,

the possibility that military decision-making will be implicated,

without evidence to demonstrate its applicability to Plaintiffs'

claims or Defendants' defenses, is insufficient to implicate a

political question. See 502 F.3d at 1361. 

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At this point, there is insufficient evidence in the record to

demonstrate that the Court will have to consider military activity

in adjudicating Plaintiffs' claims. If Defendants later discover

evidence of military decision-making that is inextricably linked to

Plaintiffs' claims, the Court will reconsider the first Baker test. 

Moreover, if, in the course of discovery, the military refuses to

disclose evidence essential to Defendants' defenses, Defendants may

move for appropriate relief. 

II. Additional Baker Tests

The second Baker test requires that Defendants demonstrate "a

lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards" to

resolve Plaintiffs' claims. Baker, 369 U.S. at 217. Federal

courts do not have the tools to evaluate the "reasonableness" of

military decisions, which "result from a complex, subtle balancing

of many technical and military considerations, including the tradeoff between safety and greater combat effectiveness." Aktepe, 105

F.3d at 1404. In particular, "[c]ourts lack standards with which

to judge whether reasonable care was taken to achieve tactical

objectives in combat while minimizing injury and loss of life."

Zuckerbraun, 755 F. Supp. at 1142. 

In Aktepe, the Eleventh Circuit held that there were no

judicially manageable standards to "determine how a reasonable

military force would have conducted the [training] drill" that

resulted in injuries to Turkish sailors. 105 F.3d at 1404.

Similarly, in Whitaker, the court held that it could not assess

"what a reasonable driver in a combat zone, subject to military

regulations and orders, would do." 444 F. Supp. 2d at 1282. 

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On the other hand, if a court finds that it will not have to

evaluate a military decision, but is instead "faced with an

ordinary tort suit, alleging that the defendants breached a duty of

care owed to the plaintiffs or their decedents . . . the department

to whom this issue has been 'constitutionally committed' is none

other than our own -- the Judiciary." Klinghoffer v. S.N.C.

Achille Lauro, 937 F.2d 44, 49 (2nd Cir. 1991). The common law of

torts provides "clear and well-settled rules" to resolve ordinary

cases between private parties. Id.

While there may be evidence that weather forecasting or pilot

error may have contributed to the accident, there is as yet no

indication that decision-making particular to the military was

implicated. Therefore, at this early stage in discovery, it

appears that judicially manageable standards exist for the

resolution of Plaintiffs' claims.

The remaining four Baker tests are also not satisfied. Even

if it transpires that military decision-making that the Court

cannot evaluate is implicated here, it does not appear that this

would involve policy or political decisions. 

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, Defendants' motion to dismiss for

lack of subject matter jurisdiction (Docket no. 68) is DENIED

without prejudice. Because the Court has ruled on Defendants'

motion to dismiss, the Court's order granting Defendants' motions

for a stay of discovery (Docket no. 69) and a protective order

(Docket no. 75) pending the Court's ruling on Defendants' motion to

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dismiss is hereby VACATED.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: 7/8/08

 

Claudia Wilken 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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