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US Supreme Court Decisions - On-Line> Volume 481 > UNITED STATES V. JOHNSON, 481 U. S. 681 (1987)
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(b) The three broad rationales underlying Feres refute the critical significance ascribed to the status of the alleged tortfeasor by the Court of Appeals. First, the distinctively federal character of the relationship between the Government and Armed Forces personnel necessitates a federal remedy that provides simple, certain, and uniform compensation, unaffected by the fortuity of the situs of the alleged negligence. Second, the statutory veterans' disability and death benefits system chanrobles.com-red
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J.,and WHITE, BLACKMUN, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, MARSHALL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined, post, p. 481 U. S. 692.
Lieutenant Commander Horton Winfield Johnson was a helicopter pilot for the United States Coast Guard, stationed chanrobles.com-red
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. 749 F.2d 1530 (1986). It noted the language of Feres that precludes suits by service members against the Government chanrobles.com-red
for injuries that "arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service." 340 U.S. at 340 U. S. 146. The court found, however, that the evolution of the doctrine since the Feres decision warranted a qualification of the original holding according to the status of the alleged tortfeasor. The court identified what it termed "the typical Feres factual paradigm" that exists when a service member alleges negligence on the part of another member of the military. 749 F.2d 1537.
749 F.2d 1539. chanrobles.com-red
Accordingly, it found that Feres did not bar respondent's suit. The court acknowledged that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, "in a case strikingly similar to this one, has reached the opposite conclusion." 749 F.2d 1539 (citing Uptegrove v. United States, 600 F.2d 1248 (1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1044 (1980)). [Footnote 3] It concluded, however, that "Uptegrove was wrongly decided," 749 F.2d 1539, and declined to reach the same result.
We granted certiorari, 479 U.S. 811 (1986), to review the Court of Appeals' reformulation of the Feres doctrine and to resolve the conflict among the Circuits on the issue. [Footnote 4] We now reverse. chanrobles.com-red
In Feres, this Court held that service members cannot bring tort suits against the Government for injuries that "arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service." 340 U.S. at 340 U. S. 146. This Court has never deviated from this characterization of the Feres bar. [Footnote 5] Nor has Congress changed this standard in the close to 40 years since it was articulated, even though, as the Court noted in Feres, Congress "possesses a ready remedy" to alter a misinterpretation of its intent. Id. at 340 U. S. 138. [Footnote 6] Although all of the cases decided by this Court under Feres have involved allegations of negligence on the part of members of the military, this Court has never suggested that the military status of the alleged tortfeasor is crucial to the application of the doctrine. [Footnote 7] chanrobles.com-red
Nor have the lower courts understood this fact to be relevant under Feres. [Footnote 8] Instead, the Feres doctrine has been applied consistently to bar all suits on behalf of service members chanrobles.com-red
This Court has emphasized three broad rationales underlying the Feres decision. See 431 U. S. 671-673 (1977), and n 2, supra. An examination of these reasons for the doctrine demonstrates that the status of the alleged tortfeasor does not have the critical significance ascribed to it by the Court of Appeals in this case. First, "[t]he relationship between the Government and members of its armed forces is distinctively federal in character.'" Feres, 340 U.S. at 340 U. S. 143 (quoting United States v. Standard Oil Co., 332 U. S. 301, 332 U. S. 305 (1947)). This federal relationship is implicated to the greatest degree when a service member is performing activities incident to his federal service. Performance of the military function in diverse parts of the country and the world entails a "[s]ignificant risk of accidents and injuries." Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, supra, at 431 U. S. 672. Where a service member is injured incident to service -- that is, because of his military relationship with the Government -- it "makes no sense to permit the fortuity of the situs of the alleged negligence to affect the liability of the Government to [the] serviceman." 431 U.S. at 431 U. S. 672. Instead, application of the underlying federal remedy that provides "simple, certain, and uniform compensation for injuries or death of those in armed services," Feres, supra,@ at 340 U. S. 144 (footnote omitted), is appropriate.
Second, the existence of these generous statutory disability and death benefits is an independent reason why the Feres doctrine bars suit for service-related injuries. [Footnote 10] In Feres, the Court observed that the primary purpose of the chanrobles.com-red
Third, Feres and its progeny indicate that suits brought by service members against the Government for injuries incurred incident to service are barred by the Feres doctrine because they are the "type[s] of claims that, if generally permitted, would involve the judiciary in sensitive military affairs at the expense of military discipline and effectiveness." United States v. Shearer, 473 U.S. at 473 U. S. 59 (emphasis in original). In every respect, the military is, as this Court has recognized, chanrobles.com-red
In this case, Lieutenant Commander Johnson was killed while performing a rescue mission on the high seas, a primary duty of the Coast Guard. See 14 U.S.C. §§ 2, 88(a)(1). [Footnote 12] There is no dispute that Johnson's injury arose directly out of the rescue mission, or that the mission was an activity incident to his military service. Johnson went on the rescue mission specifically because of his military status. His wife received and is continuing to receive statutory benefits on account of his death. Because Johnson was acting pursuant to standard operating procedures of the Coast chanrobles.com-red
In our first encounter with an FTCA suit brought by a serviceman, we gave effect to the plain meaning of the statute. In Brooks v. United States, 337 U. S. 49 (1949), military personnel had been injured in a collision with an Army truck while off duty. We rejected the Government's argument that those injured while enlisted in the military can never recover under the FTCA. We noted that the Act gives the District Courts "jurisdiction over any claim founded on negligence brought against the United States," and found the Act's exceptions "too lengthy, specific, and close to the present problem" to permit an inference that, notwithstanding the literal language of the statute, Congress intended to bar all suits brought by servicemen. Id. at 337 U. S. 51. Particularly in light of the exceptions for claims arising out of combatant activities, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(j), and in foreign countries, § 2680(k), we said, "[i]t would be absurd to believe that Congress did not have the servicemen in mind" in passing the FTCA. 337 U.S. at 337 U. S. 51. We therefore concluded that the plaintiffs in Brooks could sue under the Act. In dicta, however, we cautioned that an attempt by a serviceman to recover for injuries suffered "incident to . . . service" would chanrobles.com-red
In my view, none of these rationales justifies the result. Only the first of them, the "parallel private liability" argument, purports to be textually based, as follows: The United States is liable under the FTCA "in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances," 28 U.S.C. § 2674; since no "private individual" can raise an army, and since no State has consented to suits by members of its militia, § 2674 shields the Government from liability in the Feres situation. 340 U.S. at 340 U. S. 141-142. Under this reasoning, of course, many of the Act's exceptions are superfluous, since private individuals typically do not, for example, transmit postal matter, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b), collect taxes or customs duties, § 2680(c), impose quarantines, § 2680(f), or regulate the monetary system, § 2680(i). In any event, we subsequently recognized our error and rejected chanrobles.com-red
The unfairness to servicemen of geographically varied recovery is, to speak bluntly, an absurd justification, given that, as we have pointed out in another context, nonuniform chanrobles.com-red
To the extent that the rationale rests upon the military's need for uniformity, it is equally unpersuasive. To begin with, that supposition of congressional intent is positively contradicted by the text. Several of the FTCA's exemptions show that Congress considered the uniformity problem, see, e.g., 28 U.S.C. §§ 2680(b), 2680(i), 2680(k), yet it chose to retain sovereign immunity for only some claims affecting the military. § 2680(j). Moreover, we have effectively disavowed this "uniformity" justification -- and rendered its benefits to military planning illusory -- by permitting servicemen to recover under the FTCA for injuries suffered not incident to service, and permitting civilians to recover for injuries caused by military negligence. See, e.g., Indian Towing Co. v. United States, supra. Finally, it is difficult to explain why uniformity (assuming our rule were achieving it) is indispensable for the military, but not for the many other federal departments and agencies that can be sued under the FTCA for the negligent performance of their "unique, nationwide function[s]," Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, supra, at 431 U. S. 676 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting), including, as we have noted, the federal prison system, which may be sued under varying state laws by its inmates. See United States v. Muniz, supra. In sum, the second Feres rationale, regardless of how it is understood, is not a plausible estimation chanrobles.com-red
The credibility of this rationale is undermined severely by the fact that, both before and after Feres, we permitted injured servicemen to bring FTCA suits, even though they had been compensated under the VBA. In Brooks v. United States, 337 U. S. 49 (1949), we held that two servicemen injured off duty by a civilian Army employee could sue the Government. The fact that they had already received VBA benefits troubled us little. We pointed out that "nothing in the Tort Claims Act or the veterans' laws . . . provides for exclusiveness of remedy," and we refused to "call either remedy . . . exclusive . . . when Congress has not done so." Id. at 337 U. S. 53. We noted further that Congress had included three exclusivity provisions in the FTCA, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2672, 2676, 2679, but had said nothing about servicemen plaintiffs, 337 U.S. at 337 U. S. 53. We indicated, however, that VBA compensation chanrobles.com-red
The foregoing three rationales -- the only ones actually relied upon in Feres -- are so frail that it is hardly surprising that we have repeatedly cited the later-conceived-of "military discipline" rationale as the "best" explanation for that decision. chanrobles.com-red
It is strange that Congress; "obvious" intention to preclude Feres suits because of their effect on military discipline was discerned neither by the Feres Court nor by the Congress that enacted the FTCA (which felt it necessary expressly to exclude recovery for combat injuries). Perhaps Congress recognized that the likely effect of Feres suits upon military discipline is not as clear as we have assumed, but in fact has long been disputed. See Bennett, The Feres Doctrine, Discipline, and the Weapons of War, 29 St.Louis U.L.J. 383, 407-411 (1985). Or perhaps Congress assumed that the FTCA's explicit exclusions would bar those suits most threatening to military discipline, such as claims based upon combat command decisions, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(j); claims based upon performance of "discretionary" functions, § 2680(a); claims chanrobles.com-red
In sum, neither the three original Feres reasons nor the post hoc rationalization of "military discipline" justifies our failure to apply the FTCA as written. Feres was wrongly decided, and heartily deserves the "widespread, almost universal criticism" it has received. In re "Agent Orange" chanrobles.com-red
The Feres Court claimed its decision was necessary to make "the entire statutory system of remedies against the Government . . . a workable, consistent and equitable whole." 340 U.S. at 340 U. S. 139. I am unable to find such beauty in what we have wrought. Consider the following hypothetical (similar to one presented by Judge Weinstein in In re "Agent Orange" Product Liability Litigation, supra, at 1252): A serviceman is told by his superior officer to deliver some papers to the local United States Courthouse. As he nears his destination, a wheel on his Government vehicle breaks, causing the vehicle to injure him, his daughter (whose class happens to be touring the courthouse that day), and a United States marshal on duty. Under our case law and federal statutes, the serviceman may not sue the Government (Feres); the guard may not sue the Government (because of the exclusivity provision of the Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA), chanrobles.com-red
I cannot take comfort, as the Court does, ante at 481 U. S. 686, and n. 6, from Congress' failure to amend the FTCA to overturn Feres. The unlegislated desires of later Congresses with regard to one thread in the fabric of the FTCA could hardly chanrobles.com-red