Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/465/848
Timestamp: 2014-03-12 10:18:17
Document Index: 792072208

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

Joseph A. KOSAK, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES. | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews Joseph A. KOSAK, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES.
465 U.S. 848 (104 S.Ct. 1519, 79 L.Ed.2d 860)
Argued: Nov. 7, 1983.
[HTML] Syllabus Petitioner's art collection was seized by customs officials when he was suspected of smuggling the collection into the country. Subsequently, petitioner was acquitted of the smuggling charge, and the objects of art were returned to him upon his petition for relief from civil forfeiture. He then filed an administrative complaint seeking compensation for alleged damage to the property occurring while it was in the Customs Service's custody. When the Service denied relief, petitioner filed suit in Federal District Court under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), seeking damages for the alleged injury to his property. The District Court granted the Government's motion for dismissal of the complaint or summary judgment on the ground that the claim was barred by 28 U.S.C. 2680(c), which exempts from the coverage of the FTCA "any claims arising in respect of . . . the detention of any goods or merchandise by any officer of customs." The Court of Appeals affirmed.
The question presented in this case is whether 28 U.S.C. 2680(c), which exempts from the coverage of the Federal Tort Claims Act "any claim arising in respect of . . . the detention of any goods or merchandise by any officer of customs," precludes recovery against the United States for injury to private property sustained during a temporary detention of the property by the Customs Service.
* While a serviceman stationed in Guam, petitioner assembled a large collection of oriental art. When he was transferred from Guam to Philadelphia, petitioner brought his art collection with him. In his customs declaration,
Petitioner was charged with smuggling his art collection into the country, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 545. After a jury trial, he was acquitted. The Customs Service then notified petitioner that the seized objects were subject to civil forfeiture under 19 U.S.C. 1592 (1976), which at the time permitted confiscation of goods brought into the United States "by means of any false statement." Relying on 19 U.S.C. 1618, petitioner filed a petition for relief from the forfeiture.
Alleging that some of the objects returned to him had been injured while in the custody of the Customs Service, petitioner filed an administrative complaint with the Service requesting compensation for the damage. The Customs Service denied relief. Relying on the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. 1346(b), 2671-2680, petitioner then filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking approximately $12,000 in damages for the alleged injury to his property.
The Government moved for a dismissal of the complaint or for summary judgment on the ground that petitioner's claim was barred by § 2680(c). The District Court granted the Government's motion.
--- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 722, 74 L.Ed.2d 948 (1983). We now affirm.
The Federal Tort Claims Act, enacted in 1946, provides generally that the United States shall be liable, to the same extent as a private party, "for injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government while acting within the scope of his office or employment." 28 U.S.C. 1346(b); see also 28 U.S.C. 2674. The Act's broad waiver of sovereign immunity is, however, subject to 13 enumerated exceptions. 28 U.S.C. 2680(a)-(n). One of those exceptions, § 2680(c), exempts from the coverage of the statute "any claim arising in respect of . . . the detention of any goods or merchandise by any officer of customs. . . ."
The Government asks us to read the exception to cover all injuries to property sustained during its detention by customs officials.
The starting point of our analysis of these competing interpretations must, of course, be the language of § 2680(c). "We assume 'that the legislative purpose is expressed by the ordinary meaning of the words used.' " American Tobacco Co. v. Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 68, 102 S.Ct. 1534, 1537, 71 L.Ed.2d 748 (1982) (quoting Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1, 9, 82 S.Ct. 585, 591, 7 L.Ed.2d 492 (1962)).
At first blush, the statutory language certainly appears expansive enough to support the Government's construction; the encompassing phrase, "arising in respect of," seems to sweep within the exception all injuries associated in any way with the "detention" of goods. It must be admitted that this initial reading is not ineluctable; as Judge Weis, dissenting in the Court of Appeals, pointed out, it is possible (with some effort) to read the phrase, "in respect of" as the equivalent of "as regards" and thereby to infer that "the statutory exception is directed to the fact of detention itself, and that alone." 679 F.2d, at 310. But we think that the fairest interpretation of the crucial portion of the provision is the one that first springs to mind: "any claim arising in respect of" the detention of goods means any claim "arising out of" the detention of goods, and includes a claim resulting from negligent handling or storage of detained property.
"That the exception does not and was not intended to bar actions based on the negligent destruction, injury or loss of goods in the possession or control of the customs authorities is best illustrated by the fact that the exception immediately preceding it expressly bars actions 'arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission' of mail. 28 U.S.C. 2680(b). If Congress had similarly wished to bar actions based on the negligent loss of goods which governmental agencies other than the postal system undertook to handle, the exception in 28 U.S.C. 2680(b) shows that it would have been equal to the task. The conclusion is inescapable that it did not choose to bestow upon all such agencies general absolution from carelessness in handling property belonging to others." Id., at 534.
We find the conclusion reached by petitioner and the Second Circuit far from "inescapable." The specificity of § 2680(b), in contrast with the generality of § 2680(c), suggests, if anything, that Congress intended the former to be less encompassing than the latter. The motivation for such an intent is not hard to find. One of the principal purposes of the Federal Tort Claims Act was to waive the Government's immunity from liability for injuries resulting from auto accidents in which employees of the Postal System were at fault.
In order to ensure that § 2680(b), which governs torts committed by mailmen, did not have the effect of barring precisely the sort of suit that Congress was most concerned to authorize, the draftsmen of the provision carefully delineated the types of misconduct for which the Government was not assuming financial responsibilitynamely, "the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter"thereby excluding, by implication, negligent handling of motor vehicles. The absence of any analogous desire to limit the reach of the statutory exception pertaining to the detention of property by customs officials explains the lack of comparable nicety in the phraseology of § 2680(c).
"The proposed provision would exempt from the coverage of the Act claims arising in respect of the assessment or collection of any tax or customs duty. This exception appears in all previous drafts. It is expanded, however, so as to include immunity from liability in respect of loss in connection with the detention of goods or merchandise by any officer of customs or excise. The additional proviso has special reference to the detention of imported goods in appraisers' warehouses or customs houses, as well as seizures by law enforcement officials, internal revenue officers, and the like." A. Holtzoff, Report on Proposed Federal Tort Claims Bill 16 (1931) (Holtzoff Report) (emphasis added).
Though it cannot be definitively established that Congress relied upon Judge Holtzoff's report, it is significant that the apparent draftsman of the crucial portion of § 2680(c) believed that it would bar a suit of the sort brought by petitioner.
"These exemptions cover claims arising out of the loss or miscarriage of postal matter; the assessment or collection of taxes or assessments; the detention of goods by customs officers; admiralty and maritime torts; deliberate torts such as assault and battery; and others." H.R.Rep. No. 1287, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 6 (1945).
The Committees' casual use of the words, "arising out of," with reference to the exemption of claims pertaining to the detention of goods substantially undermines petitioner's contention that the phrase, "in respect of," was designed to limit the sorts of suits covered by the provision.
The three objectives most often mentioned in the legislative history as rationales for the enumerated exceptions are: ensuring that "certain governmental activities" not be disrupted by the threat of damage suits; avoiding exposure of the United States to liability for excessive or fraudulent claims; and not extending the coverage of the Act to suits for which adequate remedies were already available.
The exemption of claims for damage to goods in the custody of customs officials is certainly consistent with the first two of these purposes. One of the most important sanctions available to the Customs Service in ensuring compliance with the customs laws is its power to detain goods owned by suspected violators of those laws.
Congress may well have wished not to dampen the enforcement efforts of the Service by exposing the Government to private damage suits by disgruntled owners of detained property.
Congress may also have been concerned that a waiver of immunity from suits alleging damage to detained property would expose the United States to liability for fraudulent claims. The Customs Service does not have the staff or resources it would need to inspect goods at the time it seizes them. Lacking a record of the condition of a piece of property when the Service took custody of it, the Government would be in a poor position to defend a suit in which the owner alleged that the item was returned in damaged condition.
Congress may have reasoned that the frequency with which the Government would be obliged to pay undeserving claimants if it waived immunity from such suits offset the inequity, resulting from retention of immunity, to persons with legitimate grievances.
To a lesser extent, our reading of § 2680(c) is consistent with the third articulated purpose of the exceptions to the Tort Claims Act. At common law, a property owner had (and retains) a right to bring suit against an individual customs official who negligently damaged his goods.
28 U.S.C. 2006 provides that judgments in such suits shall be paid out of the federal Treasury if a court certifies that there existed probable cause for the detention of the goods and that the official was acting under the directions of an appropriate supervisor.
Congress in 1946 may have concluded that this mode of obtaining recompense from the United States (or from an individual officer) was "adequate."
To be sure, there are significant limitations to the common-law remedy, the most important of which is the apparent requirement that the plaintiff prove negligence on the part of a particular customs official.
Such proof will often be difficult to come by. But Congress may well have concluded that exposing the United States to liability for injury to property in the custody of the Customs Service under circumstances in which the owner is not able to demonstrate such specific negligence would open the door to an excessive number of fraudulent suits.
Petitioner and some commentators argue that § 2680(c) should not be construed in a fashion that denies an effectual remedy to many persons whose property is damaged through the tortious conduct of customs officials.
That contention has force, but it is properly addressed to Congress, not to this Court. The language of the statute as it was written leaves us no choice but to affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals that the Tort Claims Act does not cover suits alleging that customs officials injured property that had been detained by the Customs Service.
The Government's construction of 28 U.S.C. 2680(c) is not the one that "first springs" to my mind. Ante, at 854. Rather, I read the exception for claims arising "in respect of . . . the detention of goods" as expressing Congress's intent to preclude liability attributable to the temporary interference with the owner's possession of his goods, as opposed to liability for physical damage to his goods. That seems to me to be the normal reading of the statutory language that Congress employed, and the one that most Members of Congress voting on the proposal would have given it. Moreover, my reading, unlike the Court's,
is supported by an examination of the language used in other exceptions. Congress did not use the words "arising out of" in § 2680(c) but did use those words in three other subsections of the same section of the Act. See § 2680(b), (e) and (h). Absent persuasive evidence to the contrary, we should assume that when Congress uses different language in a series of similar provisions, it intends to express a different intention.
* In the entire 15 year history preceding the enactment of the Tort Claims Act in 1946, the Court finds only two "clues" that it believes shed any light on the meaning of § 2680(c). The first the so-called "Holtzoff Report"is nothing but an internal Justice Department working paper prepared in 1931 and never even mentioned in the legislative history of the 1946 Act. There is no indication that any Congressman ever heard of the document or knew that it even existed. The position of the majoritythat it is "significant" that the "apparent draftsman" of the relevant language himself "believed that it would bar a suit of the sort brought by petitioner," ante, at 856-857 is manifestly ill-advised. The intent of a lobbyistno matter how public spirited he may have beenshould not be attributed to the Congress without positive evidence that elected legislators were aware of and shared the lobbyist's intent.
Unless we know more about the collective legislative purpose than can be gleaned from an internal document prepared by a person who was seeking legislative action, we should be guided by the sensible statement that "in construing a statute . . . the worst person to construe it is the person who is responsible for its drafting. He is very much disposed to confuse what he intended to do with the effect of the language which in fact has been employed." Hilder v. Dexter, 1902 A.C. 474, 477 (Halsbury, L.C., abstaining).
If the draftsman of the language in question intended it to cover such cases as this one, he failed.
The Court's reliance on the "general purposes" for creating exceptions does nothing more than explain why Congress might reasonably have decided to create this exception.
Those purposes are no more persuasive than the general purposes motivating the enactment of the broad waiver of sovereign immunity effected by the statute itself.
The hypothetical rationales attributed to Congress by the majority are also internally inconsistent. If Congress, as a matter of public policy, determined that these claims should not be entertained because of the possibility for fraud, the majority's suggestion that petitioner may have a remedy under the Tucker Act is quite inexplicable.
Similarly, if Congress "may well have wished not to dampen the enforcement efforts of the Service by exposing the Government to private damages suits by disgruntled owners of detained property," ante, at 859 (emphasis added), its failure to abrogate the common law remedy against the individual customs officer is inexplicable. For I would assume that customs officers' enforcement efforts would be dampened far more by a threat of personal liability than by a threat of governmental liability. Reliance on an assumed reluctance to waive immunity regarding claims for which "adequate" remedies were already available simply begs the question. A basic reason for the Tort Claims Act was, of course, the inadequacy of the existing remedies, and there is no indication in the legislative history that Congress considered the previous remedies in this specific area adequate.
Tort claims bills had floundered on legislative shoals for nearly two decades.
A general waiver of sovereign immunity for torts was finally propelled into law by the legislative reform movement which culminated in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. E.g. United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 340 U.S. 543, 549-550, 71 S.Ct. 399, 404, 95 L.Ed. 523 (1951). The "overwhelming purpose" of the Congress which enacted the Tort Claims Act was to remove the burden of dealing with tort claims from Congress which had adjudicated these claims in the form of passing private bills, and the "reports at that session omitted previous discussions which tended to restrict the scope of the Tort Claims bill." Ibid. Hence, the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress recommended that "Congress delegate authority to the Federal Courts and to the Court of Claims to hear and settle claims against the Federal Government," explaining its recommendation, and the shortcomings of resolving such claims through consideration of private bills, as follows:
"The United States courts are well able and equipped to hear these claims and to decide them with justice and equity both to the Government and to the claimants. * * * " Report of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress pursuant to H.Con.Res. 18, Sen.Rep. No. 1011, H.R.Rep. No. 1675 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 25 (1946).
Therefore, this is "a case for applying the canon of construction of the wag who said, when the legislative history is doubtful, go to the statute." Greenwood v. United States, 350 U.S. 366, 374, 76 S.Ct. 410, 415, 100 L.Ed. 412 (1956). I would acknowledgeindeed I do acknowledgethat the Court's reading of the statutory language is entirely plausible. I would, however, tilt the scales in favor of recovery by attaching some weight to the particular language used in § 2680(c). And I must disagree with the Court's reliance on the general purposes underlying exceptions when no consideration is given to the general purpose of the statute itself. But most importantly, I would eschew any reliance on the intent of the lobbyist whose opinion on the question before us was not on the public record.
Because Guam is outside the customs territory of the United States, all goods imported therefrom are subject to duties. 19 U.S.C. 1202.
"The provisions of [
28 U.S.C. 2671-2680] and of § 1346(b) shall not apply to
In view of the fact that the Tort Claims Act permits recovery only of "money damages . . . for injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death," 28 U.S.C. 1346(b), it is unclear whether, even in the absence of § 2680(c), any of the foregoing sorts of damage would be recoverable under the Act. Cf., e.g., Idaho ex rel. Trombley v. United States Department of the Army, 666 F.2d 444 (CA9 1982), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 53, 74 L.Ed.2d 58 (1982) (adopting a restrictive interpretation of the language of § 1346(b)). If the sorts of damages that, under petitioner's theory, are covered by § 2680(c) would not be recoverable in any event because of the limitation built into § 1346(b), § 2680(c) would be mere surplusage. The unattractiveness of such a construction of the statute, see Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 392, 99 S.Ct. 675, 684, 58 L.Ed.2d 596 (1979), would cast considerable doubt on petitioner's position. However, because the question of the scope of § 1346(b) has not been briefed or argued in this case, we decline to rely on any inferences that might be drawn therefrom in our decision today.
The Court of Appeals, while properly emphasizing the plain language of § 2680(c) as the basis for its ruling, suggested that the structure of the Tort Claims Act should affect how that language is read. Relying on the principles that "sovereign immunity is the rule, and that legislative departures from the rule should be strictly construed," the Court of Appeals suggested that § 2680(c), as an exception from a statute waiving sovereign immunity, should be broadly construed. 679 F.2d, at 308-09. We find such an approach unhelpful. Though the Court of Appeals is certainly correct that the exceptions to the Tort Claims Act should not be read in a way that would "nullif[y them] through judicial interpretation," id., at 309, unduly generous interpretations of the exceptions run the risk of defeating the central purpose of the statute. See United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 340 U.S. 543, 548 n. 5, 71 S.Ct. 399, 403 n. 5, 95 L.Ed. 523 (1951); cf. Block v. Neal, --- U.S. ----, ----, 103 S.Ct. 1089, 1094, 75 L.Ed.2d 67 (1983) (" 'The exemption of the sovereign from suit involves hardship enough where consent has been withheld. We are not to add to its rigor by refinement of construction where consent has been announced.' ") (quoting Anderson v. Hayes Constr. Co., 243 N.Y. 140, 147, 153 N.E. 28, 29-30 (1926) (Cardozo, J.)). We think that the proper objective of a court attempting to construe one of the subsections of 28 U.S.C. 2680 is to identify "those circumstances which are within the words and reason of the exception"no less and no more. See Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15, 31, 73 S.Ct. 956, 965, 97 L.Ed. 1427 (1953).
"No proceedings shall lie under this section
See, e.g., 19 U.S.C. 1594 (authorizing seizure of "a vessel or vehicle" to force payment of assessed penalties); 19 U.S.C. 1595a(a) (authorizing seizure of property used to facilitate the illegal importation of other goods).
The Government's vulnerability to fraudulent claims would be especially great in a case in which the Customs Service took custody of the goods from a shipper rather than from the owner. The shipper would contend that it exercised due care in the handling of the goods. The owner would demonstrate that he received the goods in damaged condition. In the absence of an extensive system for accounting for the movements and treatment of property in its custody, the Customs Service would be hard pressed to establish that its employees were not at fault. We do not suggest that such a dilemma would automatically give rise to liability on the part of the United States; that of course would depend upon the substance of the pertinent state tort law. See 28 U.S.C. 1346(b), 2674. But uneasiness at the prospect of such scenarios may have influenced Congress when it carved out this exception to the Tort Claims Act.
We note that there exists at least one other remedial system that might enable someone in petitioner's position to obtain compensation from the Government. If the owner of property detained by the Customs Service were able to establish the existence of an implied-in-fact contract of bailment between himself and the Service, he could bring suit under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. 1491. See Hatzlachh Supply Co. v. United States, 444 U.S. 460, 100 S.Ct. 647, 62 L.Ed.2d 614 (1980).