Opinion ID: 2829694
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Intentional Tort Exception

Text: The district court held that the intentional tort exception barred Plaintiffs’ claims because they “have not alleged that the United States had a duty to warn or protect Tracy that is independent from its employment relationship with Burke.” The intentional tort exception does bar a claim that the Army failed to adequately supervise or control Burke by not fully implementing Policy 7. But it provides no basis to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims that the Army assumed a duty to Tracy under Restatement § 323 by inducing reliance in her, or through the mental health care provider duty in KRS § 202A.400. Those potential sources of the Army’s duty are independent of negligent supervision and failure to control, and are independent of Burke’s employment relationship with the Army. They therefore stand outside the intentional tort exception. Under the FTCA’s intentional tort exception, the United States retains sovereign immunity for claims “arising out of” assault, battery, or several other specified intentional torts. 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h). Courts have interpreted “arising out of” broadly. In 1985, the Supreme Court decided a case in which an Army private had been kidnapped and murdered by another soldier. United States v. Shearer, 473 U.S. 52 (1985). The Shearer plaintiff—the murdered soldier’s mother—argued that the Army’s negligent supervision of and failure to control the perpetrator had caused her son’s death. Id. at 53-54. The Court applied the Feres doctrine2 and ruled against the mother, but four justices further found that the mother’s case would be barred 2 In Feres, the Supreme Court held that “a soldier may not recover under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries which ‘arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service.’” Shearer, 473 U.S. at 57 (quoting Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 146 (1950)). Feres does not apply in the instant case because here the victims were civilians. -13- No. 14-5732 Wilburn v. United States under the FTCA’s intentional tort exception because the suit arose from the intentional act of murder. Chief Justice Burger, writing for the plurality, explained: Respondent cannot avoid the reach of § 2680(h) by framing her complaint in terms of negligent failure to prevent the assault and battery. Section 2680(h) does not merely bar claims for assault or battery; in sweeping language it excludes any claim arising out of assault or battery. We read this provision to cover claims like respondent’s that sound in negligence but stem from a battery committed by a Government employee. Thus the express words of the statute bar respondent’s claim against the government. Shearer, 473 U.S. at 55 (plurality opinion) (emphasis in the original) (internal quotation marks removed). We later adopted the Shearer plurality’s reasoning in an opinion holding that the intentional tort exception barred a mother’s claim that the Army negligently supervised servicemen who beat her son, also a soldier, to death while they were on leave together. Satterfield v. United States, 788 F.2d 395, 399-400 (6th Cir. 1986). Several years after Shearer, however, the Supreme Court held that the intentional tort exception does not categorically ban all claims alleging negligence against government employees who permit a foreseeable battery to occur. Sheridan v. United States, 487 U.S. 392, 403 (1988). The Sheridan plaintiffs filed suit under the FTCA after an armed, drunken, off-duty serviceman named Carr fired several shots into their vehicle, causing injuries and property damage. Id. at 395. They alleged that three naval corpsmen working in Bethesda Naval Hospital had observed Carr—also a naval corpsman—on the hospital premises and saw that he was both drunk and armed, yet they neither prevented him from leaving nor reported him to the authorities, id. at 395, as required by Navy regulations, id. at 401 n.5. The lower courts held that the intentional tort exception barred the plaintiffs’ claims because the government’s liability arose out of an intentional tort committed by a government employee. The Supreme Court reversed. The Court started by assuming, as had the courts -14- No. 14-5732 Wilburn v. United States below, that the plaintiffs’ allegations would support a negligence claim under Maryland tort law’s “good Samaritan provision.”3 Sheridan, 487 U.S. at 401. It then held that the “arising out of” language in the FTCA’s intentional tort exception does not reach claims that rest on a theory of liability “entirely independent of” the intentional tortfeasor’s status as a government employee. Id. The holding emphasized the disconnect between Carr’s employment status and the conduct of the allegedly-negligent servicemen who allowed him to roam the hospital grounds while drunk and armed: [T]he negligence of other Government employees who allowed a foreseeable assault and battery to occur may furnish a basis for Government liability that is entirely independent of Carr’s employment status . . . [I]t seems perfectly clear that the mere fact that Carr happened to be an off-duty federal employee should not provide a basis for protecting the Government from liability that would attach if Carr had been an unemployed civilian patient or visitor in the hospital. Indeed, in a case in which the employment status of the assailant has nothing to do with the basis for imposing liability on the Government, it would seem perverse to exonerate the Government because of the happenstance that Carr was on a federal payroll. In a case of this kind, the fact that Carr’s behavior is characterized as an intentional assault rather than a negligent act is also quite irrelevant. If the Government has a duty to prevent a foreseeably dangerous individual from wandering about unattended, it would be odd to assume that Congress intended a breach of that duty to give rise to liability when the dangerous human instrument was merely negligent but not when he or she was malicious. In fact, the human characteristics of the dangerous instrument are also beside the point. For the theory of liability in this case is analogous to cases in which a person assumes control of a vicious animal, or perhaps an explosive device. Cf. Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928). Because neither Carr’s employment status nor his state of mind has any bearing on the basis for 3 On appeal of summary judgment following the Supreme Court’s remand, the Fourth Circuit considered whether the Navy’s promulgation of the base regulations at issue indicated that it had voluntarily assumed a duty under Maryland’s “Good Samaritan” theory of liability. Sheridan v. United States, 969 F.2d 72, 74 (4th Cir. 1992). The court concluded that it did not because “[t]here is simply no evidence that the actions of the government in promulgating and carrying out, or failing to carry out, the regulations increased the risk of harm to the plaintiffs or induced reliance in the plaintiffs, prerequisites to the imposition of liability under a Maryland ‘Good Samaritan’ theory.” Id. Restatement § 323 imposes the same conditions and leads to the same conclusion here: absent a showing of resulting increased risk of harm or reliance, simply promulgating or being subject to the regulations does not create the assumption of a tort duty under Kentucky law. -15- No. 14-5732 Wilburn v. United States petitioners’ claim for money damages, the intentional tort exception to the FTCA is not applicable in this case. Sheridan v. United States, 487 U.S. at 401-03. After Sheridan, then, it is clear that the intentional tort exception does not apply to liability that is independent of the intentional tortfeasor’s status as a government employee. Numerous subsequent district and appellate court decisions have held that the intentional tort exception does not apply where the United States breached a duty independent of its duty to supervise the tortfeasor who perpetrated the assault and battery. See, e.g., Mackay v. United States, 247 F. App’x 641, 645 (6th Cir. 2007); Cline v. United States, 13 F. Supp. 3d 868, 873-74 (M.D. Tenn. 2014) (collecting cases). Though Sheridan expressly declined to decide whether negligent training or negligent supervision claims can ever survive the intentional tort exception, id. at 403 n.8, our precedent in Satterfield establishes that the exception bars such claims here. See Estate of Smith v. United States, 509 F. App’x 436, 437, 442-43 (6th Cir. 2012). Accordingly, in the instant case, the intentional tort doctrine blocks claims based on a duty owed to Tracy that simply amounted to a negligent supervision or training of Burke, but does not block claims based on a duty owed to Tracy that was independent of Burke’s employment status as a government employee at the time of the murders. Evidence of assurance from Burke’s command that the Army would restrict Burke to the base, secure all of his weapons, or take some other action that Tracy reasonably relied on would create a duty to her under Kentucky law. See Morgan, 291 S.W.3d at 632-33. This duty is not subject to the intentional tort exception because it arises from a direct relationship that the Army established with Tracy independent of Burke’s employment relationship. -16- No. 14-5732 Wilburn v. United States As was the case in Sheridan, the fact that the Army caused Tracy to rely on it to lessen her risk of an intentional tort rather than an act of negligence would be irrelevant. Had Tracy reasonably relied on the Army’s assertion that it would protect her from a non-employee, a vicious animal, or a non-human hazard, the intentional tort exception would not apply. Following Sheridan’s logic, there would be no basis to conclude that the exception would apply simply because Burke happened to be an employee. Based on Plaintiffs’ allegations, the duty flows under Restatement § 323 simply because the Army took on an affirmative duty to Tracy— the assertion that it would mitigate a risk to her—upon which she reasonably relied. This is not a negligent supervision claim, nor is it based on the Army’s employment relationship with Burke. The fact that Burke was employed by the Army would also not be of any consequence with respect to the mental health professional’s duty to disclose under Kentucky law: the mental health professional would have a duty to warn about a patient’s threat regardless of whether the patient was a soldier or civilian. Thus, in the narrow confines of the two claims presented, the intentional tort exception does not apply.