Opinion ID: 328967
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Immunity Issue.

Text: 35 Florida East Coast submits that the district court erred in several respects in determining that the United States is statutorily immune from liability for damages resulting from the government's negligence in the planning or installation of a flood control project. Section 702c provides in pertinent part: 36 No liability of any kind shall attach to or rest upon the United States for any damage from or by floods or flood waters at any place . . . . 4 37 Section 702c, the railroad contends, insulates the government from liability only with respect to natural, as opposed to artificially precipitated, floods. The federal courts, however, have reached a consensus that the United States is protected from liability for damages caused by  floods or flood waters in connection with flood control projects, even when the government's own negligence has caused or aggravated the losses. 5 There are decisions which impose liability on the United States for damages from flooding, but such decisions do not involve flood control projects within the contemplation of section 702c. 6 Rather the subjects of such suits are drainage facilities incidental to other government installations, navigation projects, and government conduct wholly unrelated to any act of Congress authorizing expenditures of federal funds for flood control, or any act taken pursuant to such authorization. 7 Decisions that lie beyond the scope of section 702c cannot be understood to limit the immunity of the federal government for flood damage in connection with projects like the one present here. 38 Moreover, contrary to the argument pressed by Florida East Coast, this individualized provision concerning federal immunity was not implicitly repealed by the passage of the Federal Tort Claims Act. 8 The Tort Claims Act 9 lists the statutes specifically revoked thereby, and section 702c is not among them. There is little specific evidence concerning the legislative intent undergirding section 702c. 10 It would appear, however, that in view of the enormous cost of a broad flood control program, and the potential for immense liability if the United States were held responsible for negligent construction, Congress wished to impose a ceiling on the total cost of the enterprise. 11 Therefore, we must conclude, with the Eighth Circuit, that 39 when consideration is given to the basic importance of section (702c) to the vast federal flood control appropriations and undertakings, it should not lightly be assumed that the fundamental policy was reversed by mere implication . . . . 12 40 The railroad contends, however, that the conditions of section 702c immunity were not met here because the washouts were not caused by floods or flood waters as required by the Act. Instead, claims the railroad, the washouts were caused by rapid surface water runoff drawn under the roadbed and into the negligently designed and negligently built interceptor canals. 41 We conclude that Congress intended to insulate the United States from the type of liability asserted here. In enacting section 702c Congress granted immunity to the United States in the broadest and most emphatic language, 13 protecting it against liability of any kind . . . for any damage from or by floods or flood waters . . . . 14 Congress did not limit this immunity to damage done directly by inundation, but provided for immunity also from damage resulting from . . . flood waters. 42 The damages in question here occurred adjacent to a federal flood control project as a consequence of its design and operation. According to the trial judge, one of the contributing factors was a heavy rainfall so extraordinary that the region was declared a flood disaster area. In Stover v. United States, the trial judge defined a flood as water which inundates an area of the surface of the earth where it ordinarily would not be expected to be, and as (w)ater which has overflowed the natural banks of the stream in its natural channel . . . . 15 The railroad reasons that because the water that caused the damage was not overflow water from the interceptor canals, it was not flood water at all, but surface water. The Stover definition, however, is not restrictive; the term floods and flood waters as used in section 702c is sufficiently comprehensive to encompass the extraordinary rising of waters even in a place where water may often be found, such as the swampy area around the K-line. 16 This is particularly true when the site of the rising waters is within a larger region designated a flood disaster area. In both instances the damage done to the railroad, though not the result of inundation of the line itself, resulted from the presence of flood waters around its roadbed. 43 It does not seem reasonable to hold that Congress intended to create immunity for damages which occur when waters within a flood control area leave their normal course, but at the same time intended to permit liability for damage from the increased flow of flood water through its normal channels. Yet, to sustain the railroad's argument would require us to so interpret section 702c. This we decline to do. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's conclusion that, within the factual context presented here, the United States is immune. 44