Source: http://ny.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19820205_0040990.C02.htm/qx
Timestamp: 2016-10-26 02:41:17
Document Index: 450110927

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1346', '§ 2680', '§ 1225', '§ 2680', '§ 2680', '§ 1225', '§ 235', '§ 235', '§ 2680', '§ 2680', '§ 2680', '§ 2680', '§ 2680']

| Caban v. United States
Appeal from a grant of summary judgment by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Lee P. Gagliardi, J ., dismissing a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b) and 2671 et seq., on the ground that the United States is immune from suit for torts arising out of discretionary functions of its employees pursuant to § 2680(a) of the Act. Judgment reversed and case remanded for further proceedings.
On the record in the district court, the facts are as follows. On January 5, 1978, appellant, who apparently is a native of Puerto Rico, disembarked at John F. Kennedy International Airport from a flight that originated in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1225*fn1 and regulations adopted thereunder,*fn2 an agent of the INS stopped appellant for a routine examination to determine his admissibility into the United States. When this preliminary investigation failed to persuade the INS agent that Caban was entitled to entry, appellant was referred to a secondary inspection, where further evidence of citizenship was demanded. Unable to produce a passport, Caban offered the officer a birth certificate indicating that he was born on September 19, 1941 in Las Marias, Puerto Rico. He had in his possession a New York State driver's license, a social security card, a union membership card and a letter from the State Department asking for additional evidence relevant to his passport application. The officer, in turn, asked appellant various questions designed to establish his citizenship. Appellant's answers to these questions made his claim highly doubtful: he gave inconsistent answers to questions about when he came to New York initially; he could not answer simple questions about Puerto Rico such as the colors of its flag and the names of its hotels and his local hospital. Caban was therefore referred to another INS agent, who questioned Caban further and then received permission from the supervisor in charge to detain Caban. Appellant was then brought to the INS detention center in Brooklyn, New York, where he remained until he was released. Alberto Riefkohl, an INS trial attorney who is also a native of Puerto Rico, subsequently interviewed Caban. Although Caban was equally unable to satisfy Riefkohl that his claim to citizenship was legitimate, he was released on a $1,000 appearance bond on January 11, 1978, six days after he was detained.
The provisions of this chapter and section 1346(b)*fn3 of this title shall not apply to-
The discretionary function exception to the FTCA has presented the courts with problems almost from the time of its enactment in 1946. The principal difficulty is simply that all federal employees exercise a certain amount of discretion in the discharge of their responsibilities. In short, no federal employee is a robot. But if discretion means what Webster's says it means-the "power of free decision or latitude of choice within certain legal bounds," Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary 238 (7th ed. 1965)-then this exception swallows the general rule that waives the United States' immunity to suits arising out of its employees' actions. Over the years, the courts have been called upon to draw this elusive line between protected and unprotected activities with varying degrees of success. See, e.g., the discussion in Hendry v. United States, 418 F.2d 774, 780-782 (2d Cir. 1969). Nonetheless, commentators have classified the analyses developed into three types: the "planning-operational" test, derived from Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15, 73 S. Ct. 956, 97 L. Ed. 1427 (1953); the "good Samaritan" test, exemplified by Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U.S. 61, 76 S. Ct. 122, 100 L. Ed. 48 (1955) and Ingham v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 373 F.2d 227 (2d Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. United States v. Ingham, 389 U.S. 931, 88 S. Ct. 295, 19 L. Ed. 2d 292 (1967), and a test based upon whether the action involved the balancing of policy factors ("policy balancing" test), which is currently in the ascendancy, see, e.g., Canadian Transport Co. v. United States, 214 U.S. App. D.C. 138, 663 F.2d 1081, 1086-87 (D.C.Cir.) 1980; Sami v. United States, 199 U.S. App. D.C. 173, 617 F.2d 755, 765-68 (D.C.Cir.1979); Blessing v. United States, 447 F. Supp. 1160 (E.D.Pa.1978); Comment, Scope of the Discretionary Function Exception Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 67 Geo.L.J. 879 (1979) and cases cited at 891 n.107; Note, The Discretionary-Function Exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act, 42 Alb.L.Rev. 721 (1978).
We agree with the current thinking that the policy balancing test best fulfills the purpose for which the discretionary function exception was designed. By barring tort liability for activities that require the alleged tortfeasor to consider and weigh competing policies in arriving at his decision, this test protects courts from "involve(ment) in making ... decision(s) entrusted to other branches of the government," Canadian Transport, 663 F.2d at 1087, and especially from questions involving "not negligence but social wisdom, not due care but political practicability, not reasonableness but economic expediency," Blessing, 447 F. Supp. at 1170. The exception thus protects the principles embodied in the separation of powers doctrine by keeping the judiciary from deciding questions consigned to the executive and legislative branches of the government. This core function was recognized in our decision in Hendry v. United States, supra. There we viewed Dalehite as excepting public policy type decisions, 418 F.2d at 783, and stated that "it is clear that § 2680(a) was intended to protect the validity of governmental regulations from challenge in a tort action for damages...." Id. at 782. Similarly, we found that the discretionary function exception does not allow attacks on "those governmental decisions in which, to be effective, the decision-maker must look to considerations of public policy and not merely to ... standards of general reasonableness." Id. at 783.
Applying this test to the situation before us, we find that the activities of the INS agents who detained appellant do not fall within the purview of § 2680(a) because the activities are not the kind that involve weighing important policy choices. While it is true that the pertinent statutes and regulations vest immigration officials with broad discretion by defining an applicant's entry rights in terms of how he "appear(s)" to the immigration officer, § 1225(b), and whether the INS agent is "satisfied" with his proof of entitlement to enter, 8 C.F.R. § 235.1 (1980), that language goes only to the standard of care by which the INS employees' behavior is judged. The quoted language does not convert the discharge of prescribed responsibilities into "decisions which involve a choice between competing policy considerations...." Canadian Transport, 663 F.2d at 1087. In contrast, the promulgation of regulation 8 C.F.R. § 235.1 is a discretionary act entitled to immunity under § 2680(a) because setting down that rule involves balancing the government's interest in protecting its citizens' welfare against the applicant's interest in a fair and just determination of his rights. Thus, if Caban were suing the INS for adopting this regulation, he would find his case properly dismissed under § 2680(a) even if he could show that the regulation resulted directly in his detention in Brooklyn for six days.
Moreover, contrary to the government's contention, our construction of § 2680(a) is not inconsistent with prior decisions of this court. It is true that in Hendry, supra, relied upon by the district judge, there is language that suggests that ad hoc determinations are protected by the discretionary function exception. Nonetheless, the holding in that case was that § 2680(a) did not bar an FTCA suit based on the loss of a merchant marine license as a result of a negligent psychiatric examination. We think that determining whether a merchant mariner is mentally fit involves no less discretion than determining whether an applicant is an American citizen, an objectively verifiable fact. If the former judgment does not involve the kind of discretion protected by the FTCA, then neither does the latter. Similarly, the decision to detain someone at the border is not fraught with the need to balance competing policy considerations that obtains when the Comptroller of the Currency decides whether or not to appoint a receiver for a national bank, see Huntington Towers, Ltd. v. Franklin Nat'l Bank, 559 F.2d 863, 870 (2d Cir. 1977), cert. denied sub nom. Huntington Towers, Ltd. v. Federal Reserve Bank, 434 U.S. 1012, 98 S. Ct. 726, 54 L. Ed. 2d 756 (1978).
By its terms, this section waives the government's immunity to liability arising out of certain intentional torts committed by investigative and law enforcement officers such as the INS agents.*fn4 We believe that the government is correct in asserting that this subsection must be read in conjunction with the discretionary function exception. We do not think, however, that either section should be read to eviscerate the other. Cf. Sami v. United States, 617 F.2d at 768. If we classify as discretionary the basically mechanical duty to ascertain whether an applicant meets the minimal standards for entry into this country, we will jeopardize a primary purpose for enacting § 2680(h). This section was triggered by the abusive tactics of federal narcotics agents who engaged in illegal, unconstitutional "no-knock" raids. The measure was designed to "provide a remedy against the Federal Government for innocent victims of Federal law enforcement abuses." S.Rep.No. 93-588, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. (1974), reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 2789, 2792. Compared to the decision of the INS agents here, the decision of a narcotics agent as to whether there is probable cause to search, seize, or arrest raises many more competing considerations. Since the amendment to the statute clearly allows the government to be sued for narcotics agents' abuses, Caban's seems an a fortiori case for allowing suit.
We hasten to add that this interpretation in no way equates the standard for judging the legality of an arrest with the standard for evaluating the legality of a border exclusion. It has long been the law that people have significantly less rights at a border than they have in the interior, cf., e.g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 154, 45 S. Ct. 280, 285, 69 L. Ed. 543 (1925); Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 272, 93 S. Ct. 2535, 2539, 37 L. Ed. 2d 596 (1973). Conversely, law enforcement officers need far less reason to detain an applicant for entry than they need to make an arrest within the country. The issue of what standard applies to a border detention is thus a difficult one, but was not addressed below, and we will therefore not do so here. It may very well be that because of the broad power given the immigration authorities, on these facts it will be very difficult for appellant to prove that a tort was committed. We are concerned here only with whether the district court erred by, in effect, finding that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction to hear this case because the action fell within the discretionary function exception to the Act.*fn5 All we decide now is that Caban's cause of action falls within the general waiver of the United States' sovereign immunity.