Source: http://openjurist.org/print/25935
Timestamp: 2013-12-04 21:30:44
Document Index: 680548029

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1346', '§ 1346', '§ 2671', '§ 2671', '§ 2680', '§ 2680']

340 US 135 Feres v. United States Jefferson
71 S.Ct. 153
95 L.Ed. 152
FERESv.UNITED STATES. JEFFERSON v. UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES v. GRIGGS.
Nos. 9, 29, 31.
Argued Oct. 12, 13, 1950.
Mr. David H. Moses, Suffern, N.Y., for petitioner Feres.
Mr. Morris Rosenberg, Baltimore, Md., for petitioner Jefferson.
Mr. Newell A. Clapp, Washington, D.C., for the United States.
Mr. Frederick P. Cranston, Denver, Colo., for respondent Griggs.
The Feres case: The District Court dismissed an action by the executrix of Feres against the United States to recover for death caused by negligence. Decedent perished by fire in the barracks at Pine Camp, New York, while on active duty in service of the United States. Negligence was alleged in quartering him in barracks known or which should have been known to be unsafe because of a defective heating plant, and in failing to maintain an adequate fire watch. The Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, affirmed.1
The Jefferson case: Plaintiff, while in the Army, was required to undergo an abdominal operation. About eight months later, in the course of another operation after plaintiff was discharged, a towel 30 inches long by 18 inches wide, marked 'Medical Department U.S. Army,' was discovered and removed from his stomach. The complaint alleged that it was negligently left there by the army surgeon. The District Court, being doubtful of the law, refused without prejudice the Government's pretrial motion to dismiss the complaint.2 After trial, finding negligence as a fact, Judge Chesnut carefully reexamined the issue of law and concluded that the Act does not charge the United States with liability in this type of case.3 The Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, affirmed.4
The common fact underlying the three cases is that each claimant, while on active duty and not on furlough, sustained injury due to negligence of others in the armed forces. The only issue of law raised is whether the Tort Claims Act extends its remedy to one sustaining 'incident to the service' what under other circumstances would be an actionable wrong. This is the 'wholly different case' reserved from our decision in Brooks v. United States, 337 U.S. 49, 52, 69 S.Ct. 918, 920, 93 L.Ed. 1200.
We do not overlook considerations persuasive of liability in these cases. The Act does confer district court jurisdiction generally over claims for money damages against the United States founded on negligence. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b). It does contemplate that the Government will sometimes respond for negligence of military personnel, for it defines 'employee of the Government' to include 'members of the military or naval forces of the United States,' and provides that "acting within the scope of his office or employment' in the case of a member of the military or naval forces of the United States, means acting in line of duty.' 28 U.S.C. § 2671, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2671. Its exceptions might also imply inclusion of claims such as we have here. 28 U.S.C. § 2680(j), 28 U.S.C.A. § 2680(j) excepts 'any claim arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during time of war' (emphasis supplied), from which it is said we should infer allowance of claims arising from non-combat activities in peace. Section 2680(k) excludes 'any claim arising in a foreign country.' Significance also has been attributed in these cases, as in the Brooks case, supra, 337 U.S. at page 51, 69 S.Ct. 919, to the fact that eighteen tort claims bills were introduced in Congress between 1925 and 1935 and all but two expressly denied recovery to members of the armed forces; but the bill enacted as the present Tort Claims Act from its introduction made no exception. We also are reminded that the Brooks case, in spite of its reservation of service-connected injuries, interprets the Act to cover claims not incidental to service, and it is argued that much of its reasoning is as apt to impose liability in favor of a man on duty as in favor of one on leave. These considerations, it is said, should persuade us to cast upon Congress, as author of the confusion, the task of qualifying and clarifying its language if the liability here asserted should prove so depleting of the public treasury as the Government fears.
This Act, however, should be construed to fit, so far as will comport with its words, into the entire statutory system of remedies against the Government to make a workable, consistent and equitable whole. The Tort Claims Act was not an isolated and spontaneous flash of congressional generosity. It marks the culmination of a long effort to mitigate unjust consequences of sovereign immunity from suit. While the political theory that the King could do so wrong was repudiated in America, a legal doctrine derived from it that the Crown is immune from any suit to which it has not consented6 was invoked on behalf of the Republic and applied by our courts as vigorously as it had been on behalf of the Crown.7 As the Federal Government expanded its activities, its agents caused a multiplying number of remediless wrongs—wrongs which would have been actionable if inflicted by an individual or a corporation but remediless solely because their perpetrator was an officer or employee of the Government. Relief was often sought and sometimes granted through private bills in Congress, the number of which steadily increased as