Opinion ID: 77837
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Does the suit involve a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards?

Text: The second Baker factor applies when there is a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the case. Baker, 369 U.S. at 217, 82 S.Ct. at 710. Courts have frequently held that certain military judgments are outside the competence of courts. In Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 2440, 37 L.Ed.2d 407 (1973), the Supreme Court held that a suit against the Ohio National Guard in the wake of the Kent State incident was barred on political question grounds. The Court stated, [I]t is difficult to conceive of an area of governmental activity in which the courts have less competence. The complex, subtle, and professional decisions as to the composition, training, equipping, and control of a military force are essentially professional military judgments, unsuitable for judicial resolution. Id. at 10, 93 S.Ct. at 2446; see also Boyle, 487 U.S. at 511, 108 S.Ct. at 2518 (precluding certain tort suits against military contractors where military requested a certain design because such military decisions involve[] not merely engineering analysis but judgment as to the balancing of many technical, military, and even social considerations, including specifically the trade-off between greater safety and greater combat effectiveness). In Aktepe, we found that the political question doctrine applied, in part because there are no judicially manageable standards to apply to the training activities of the United States military: In order to determine whether the Navy conducted the missile firing drill in a negligent manner, a court would have to determine how a reasonable military force would have conducted the drill. . . . Decisions relative to training result from a complex, subtle balancing of many technical and military considerations, including the trade-off between safety and greater combat effectiveness. . . . [C]ourts lack standards with which to assess whether reasonable care was taken to achieve military objectives while minimizing injury and loss of life. Aktepe, 105 F.3d at 1404. Similarly, in Tiffany (the case involving the allegedly negligent NORAD intercept), the Fourth Circuit's dismissal was based in part on a lack of judicial competence: Courts cannot impose their own concept of `the prudent intercept' on NORAD . . . . Any judgment we might render would lay upon NORAD a strata of tort law which would be both capricious and confining in its impact. Tiffany, 931 F.2d at 279. Presidential has not only failed to show the existence of a military judgment that might be implicated by this suit, it has also failed to show that the case will require the application of judicially unmanageable standards. Unlike Aktepe and Tiffany, it is not evident on the limited record in the instant case that a court would have to develop a concept akin to a reasonable intercept or a reasonable military training exercise. The allegations do not involve combat, training activities, or any peculiarly military activity at all. [32] McMahon alleges that Presidential negligently staffed, equipped, and otherwise operated its flights. As in any tort suit involving a plane crash, the court will simply have to determine whether the choices Presidential made were negligent. It is well within the competence of a federal court to apply negligence standards to a plane crash. See Baker, 369 U.S. at 226, 82 S.Ct. at 715 (refusing to dismiss in part because [j]udicial standards under the Equal Protection Clause are well developed and familiar). We readily acknowledge that flying over Afghanistan during wartime is different from flying over Kansas on a sunny day. But this does not render the suit inherently non-justiciable. While the court may have to apply a standard of care to a flight conducted in a less than hospitable environment, that standard is not inherently unmanageable. See Linder v. Portocarrero, 963 F.2d 332, 337 (11th Cir.1992) (rejecting political question challenge to tort suit arising out of activity of Nicaraguan contras, and noting that the common law of tort provides clear and well-settled rules on which the district court can easily rely) ( quoting Klinghoffer v. S.N.C. Achille Lauro, 937 F.2d 44, 49 (2d Cir.1991)). The flexible standards of negligence law are well-equipped to handle varying fact situations. The case does not involve a sui generis situation such as military combat or training, [33] where courts are incapable of developing judicially manageable standards. Presidential is therefore not entitled to dismissal on the basis of the second Baker factor. [34]