Source: https://m.openjurist.org/340/us/135
Timestamp: 2020-07-13 12:57:17
Document Index: 480050167

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2674', '§ 2674', '§ 1346', '§ 1346', '§ 223', '§ 2672', '§ 2672', '§ 903', '§ 903', '§ 1491', '§ 1491', '§ 1346', '§ 1346', '§ 1291', '§ 410', 'art 135', '§ 701', '§ 701', '§ 718', '§ 718', '§ 725', '§ 725', '§ 731', '§ 731', '§ 740', '§ 740', '§ 501', '§ 501']

340 US 135 Feres v. United States Jefferson | OpenJurist
340 U.S. 135 - Feres v. United States Jefferson
UNITED STATES. JEFFERSON v. UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES v. GRIGGS.
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 Government activity increased. The volume of these private bills, the inadequacy of congressional machinery for determination of facts, the importunities to which claimants subjected members of Congress, and the capricious results, led to a strong demand that claims for tort wrongs be submitted to adjudication. Congress already had waived immunity and made the Government answerable for breaches of its contracts and certain other types of claims.8 At last, in connection with the Reorganization Act, it waived immunity and transferred the burden of examining tort claims to the courts. The primary purpose of the Act was to extend a remedy to those who had been without; if it incidentally benefited those already well provided for, it appears to have been unintentional. Congress was suffering from no plague of private bills on the behalf of military and naval personnel, because a comprehensive system of relief had been authorized for them and their dependents by statute.
Looking to the detail of the Act, it is true that it provides, broadly, that the District Court 'shall have exclusive jurisdiction of civil actions on claims against the United States, for money damages * * *.'9 This confers jurisdiction to render judgment upon all such claims. But it does not say that all claims must be allowed. Jurisdiction is necessary to deny a claim on its merits as matter of law as much as to adjudge that liability exists. We interpret this language to mean all it says, but no more. Jurisdiction of the defendant now exists where the defendant was immune from suit before; it remains for courts, in exercise of their jurisdiction, to determine whether any claim is recognizable in law.
For this purpose, the Act goes on to prescribe the test of allowable claims, which is, 'The United States shall be liable * * * in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances * * *,' with certain exceptions not material here. 28 U.S.C. § 2674, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2674. It will be seen that this is not the creation of new causes of action but acceptance of liability under circumstances that would bring private liability into existence. This, we think, embodies the same idea that its English equivalent enacted in 1947 (Crown Proceedings Act 1947; 10 and 11 Geo. VI, c. 44, p. 863) expressed, 'Where any person has a claim against the Crown after the commencement of this Act, and, if this Act had not been passed, the claim might have been enforced, subject to the grant * * *' of consent to be sued, the claim may now be enforced without specific consent. One obvious shortcoming in these claims is that plaintiffs can point to no liability of a 'private individual' even remotely analogous to that which they are asserting against the United States. We know of no American law which ever has permitted a soldier to recover for negligence, against either his superior officers or the Government he is serving.10 Nor is there any liability 'under like circumstances,' for no private individual has power to conscript or mobilize a private army with such authorities over persons as the Government vests in echelons of command. The nearest parallel, even if we were to treat 'private individual' as including a state, would be the relationship between the states and their militia. But if we indulge plaintiffs the benefit of this comparison, claimants cite us no state, and we know of none, which has permitted members of its militia to maintain tort actions for injuries suffered in the service, and in at least one state the contrary has been held to be the case.11 It is true that if we consider relevant only a part of the circumstances and ignore the status of both the wronged and the wrongdoer in these cases we find analogous private liability. In the usual civilian doctor and patient relationship, there is of course a liability for malpractice. And a landlord would undoubtedly be held liable if an injury occurred to a tenant as the result of a negligently maintained heating plant. But the liability assumed by the Government here is that created by 'all the circumstances,' not that which a few of the circumstances might create. We find no parallel liability before, and we think no new one has been created by, this Act. Its effect is to waive immunity from recognized causes of action and was not to visit the Government with novel and unprecedented liabilities.
It is not without significance as to whether the Act should be construed to apply to service-connected injuries that it makes '* * * the law of the place where the act or omission occurred' govern any consequent liability. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b). This provision recognizes and assimilates into federal law the rules of substantive law of the several states, among which divergencies are notorious. This perhaps is fair enough when the claimant is not on duty or is free to choose his own habitat and thereby limit the jurisdiction in which it will be possible for federal activities to cause him injury. That his tort claims should be governed by the law of the location where he has elected to be is just as fair when the defendant is the Government as when the defendant is a private individual. But a soldier on active duty has no such choice and must serve any place or, under modern conditions, any number of places in quick succession in the forty-eight states, the Canal Zone, or Alaska, or Hawaii, or any other territory of the United States. That the geography of an injury should select the law to be applied to his tort claims makes no sense. We cannot ignore the fact that most states have abolished the common-law action for damages between employer and employee and superseded it with workman's compensation statutes which provide, in most instances, the sole basis of liability. Absent this, or where such statutes are inapplicable, states have differing provisions as to limitations of liability and different doctrines as to assumption of risk, fellowservant rules and contributory or comparative negligence. It would hardly be a rational plan of providing for those disabled in service by others in service to leave them dependent upon geographic considerations over which they have no control and to laws which fluctuate in existence and value.
The relationship between the Government and members of its armed forces is 'distinctively federal in character', as this Court recognized in United States v. Standard Oil Co., 332 U.S. 301, 67 S.Ct. 1604, 91 L.Ed. 2067, wherein the Government unsuccessfully sought to recover for losses incurred by virtue of injuries to a soldier. The considerations which lead to that decision apply with even greater force to this case: '* * * To whatever extent state law may apply to govern the relations between soldiers or others in the armed forces and persons outside them or nonfederal governmental agencies, the scope, nature, legal incidents and consequence of the relation between persons in service and the Government are fundamentally derived from federal sources and governed by federal authority. See Tarble's Case, 13 Wall. 397, 20 L.Ed. 597; Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U.S. 487, 6 S.Ct. 148, 29 L.Ed. 458. * * *' 332 U.S. at pages 305 306, 67 S.Ct. at page 1607.
No federal law recognizes a recovery such as claimants seek. The Military Personnel Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 223b, now superseded by 28 U.S.C. § 2672, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2672, permitted recovery in some circumstances, but it specifically excluded claims of military personnel 'incident to their service.'
This Court, in deciding claims for wrongs incident to service under the Tort Claims Act, cannot escape attributing some bearing upon it to enactments by Congress which provide systems of simple, certain, and uniform compensation for injuries or death of those in armed services.12 We might say that the claimant may (a) enjoy both types of recovery, or (b) elect which to pursue, thereby waiving the other, or (c) pursue both, crediting the larger liability with the proceeds of the smaller, or (d) that the compensation and pension remedy excludes the tort remedy. There is as much statutory authority for one af for another of these conclusions. If Congress had contemplated that this Tort Act would be held to apply in cases of this kind, it is difficult to see why it should have omitted any provision to adjust these two types of remedy to each other. The absence of any such adjustment is persuasive that there was no awareness that the Act might be interpreted to permit recovery for injuries incident to military service.
A soldier is at peculiar disadvantage in litigation.13 Lack of time and money, the difficulty if not impossibility of procuring witnesses, are only a few of the factors working to his disadvantage. And the few cases charging superior officers or the Government with neglect or misconduct which have been brought since the Tort Claims Act, of which the present are typical, have either been suits by widows or surviving dependents, or have been brought after the individual was discharged.14 The compensation system, which normally requires no litigation, is not negligible or niggardly, as these cases demonstrate. The recoveries compare extremely favorably with those provided by most workman's compensation statutes. In the Jefferson case, the District Court considered actual and prospective payments by the Veterans' Administration as diminution of the verdict. Plaintiff received $3,645.50 to the date of the court's computation and on estimated life expectancy under existing legislation would prospectively receive $31,947 in addition. In the Griggs case, the widow, in the two-year period after her husband's death, received payments in excess of $2,100. In addition, she received $2,695, representing the six months' death gratuity under the Act of December 17, 1919, as amended, 41 Stat. 367, 57 Stat. 599, 10 U.S.C. § 903, 10 U.S.C.A. § 903. It is estimated that her total future pension payments will aggregate $18,000. Thus the widow will receive an amount in excess of $22,000 from Government gratuities, whereas she sought and could seek under state law only $15,000, the maximum permitted by Illinois for death.
Judgments in Feres and Jefferson cases affirmed; judgment in Griggs case reversed.
D.C., 77 F.Supp. 706.
The Crown has recently submitted itself to suit, see 340 U.S. 141, 71 S.Ct. 157.
United States v. McLemore, 4 How. 286, 11 L.Ed. 977; Reeside v. Walker, 11 How. 272, 290, 13 L.Ed. 693; Ickes v. Fox, 300 U.S. 82, 96, 57 S.Ct. 412, 417, 81 L.Ed. 525.
28 U.S.C. § 1491, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1491.
28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b). The provisions of the Tort Claims Act are now found in Title 28, §§ 1291, 1346, 1402, 1504, 2110, 2401, 2402, 2411, 2412, 2671—2680. In recodifying Title 28 of the United States Code, changes in language were made. The Tort Claims Act, as originally enacted, 60 Stat. 843, provided in § 410 that the District Court 'shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear, determine, and render judgment on any claim against the United States, for money only * * *.' (Emphasis supplied.) We attribute to this change of language no substantive change of law.
Cf. Dinsman v. Wilkes, 12 How. 390, 13 L.Ed. 1036 and Weaver v. Ward, Hobart 135 (1616), 80 Eng.Rep. 284 as to intentional torts.
Goldstein v. State, 281 N.Y. 396, 24 N.E.2d 97, 129 A.L.R. 905.
48 Stat. 8 (1933), as amended, 38 U.S.C. § 701 (1946), 38 U.S.C.A. § 701; 48 Stat. 11 (1933), as amended, 38 U.S.C. § 718 (1946), 38 U.S.C.A. § 718; 55 Stat. 608 (1941), 38 U.S.C. § 725 (1946), 38 U.S.C.A. § 725; 57 Stat. 558 (1943), as amended, 38 U.S.C. § 731 (1946), 38 U.S.C.A. § 731; 62 Stat. 1219, 1220 (1948), 38 U.S.C. (Supp. III) §§ 740, 741 (1950), 38 U.S.C.A. §§ 740, 741.
Relief was provided in the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 1178, 50 U.S.C.App. § 501 et seq., 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 501 et seq.
Brooks v. United States, supra (discharged at time of suit); Santana v. United States, 1 Cir., 175 F.2d 320, 321 (suit by sole heirs); Ostrander v. United States, 2 Cir., 178 F.2d 923 (suit by widow); Samson v. United States, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 79 F.Supp. 406 (suit by administrator); Alansky v. Northwest Airlines, D.C.D.Mont., 77 F.Supp. 556 (suit by widow and son).