Opinion ID: 73516
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Circuit Interpretation and Application of the Feres Doctrine

Text: 29 The former Fifth Circuit differentiated between the rationales or policy considerations that the Court used to justify the Feres doctrine and its application to decide the incident to service line of demarcation for compensation determination under the FTCA. See Parker, 611 F.2d at 1010-15. More analysis than a purely causal relationship with the military is required; that is, one cannot merely state that but for the individual's military service, the injury would not have occurred. Id. at 1011; see Brooks, 337 U.S. at 52, 69 S.Ct. at 920 (recognizing that all human events depend upon what has already transpired). Our court derived from Parker, a three-part test, which considers (1) duty status, (2) location, and (3) activity, to determine whether a service member's injuries resulting from government negligence are compensable under the FTCA because they are incident to service. See Pierce, 813 F.2d at 353-54; Parker, 611 F.2d at 1013-15. After evaluating the totality of these factual circumstances, we decide whether the injury in question was incident to service. See Pierce, 813 F.2d at 353; Parker, 611 F.2d at 1013. 30
31 Critical to the Court's determination that the injuries to the three servicemen in Feres were incident to service was their active duty status. The Court specified that [t]he common fact underlying the three cases is that each claimant, while on active duty and not on furlough, sustained injury due to negligence of others in the armed forces. Feres, 340 U.S. at 138, 71 S.Ct. at 155 (emphasis added). Our court has recognized that the serviceman's duty status was the most important criterion in determining whether an injury was incident to military service. Jimenez v. United States, 158 F.3d 1228, 1229 (11th Cir.1998) (per curiam). 32 While a service member who is on active duty and on duty for the day is acting 'incident to service,'  a member of the armed forces on furlough or leave, as in Brooks, normally has an FTCA action. 19 Parker, 611 F.2d at 1013. The service member in Parker had requested and received permission to be absent from his normal duty hours for four days and five nights for the purpose of moving his family to another residence away from the military reservation. At the inception of this leave, as Parker was returning home after his normal duty hours and still on the military reservation, another serviceman driving a military vehicle negligently collided head-on with Parker, who died from the injuries that he sustained. In reversing the district court's determination that Parker was acting incident to service at the time of his accident, the court permitted the FTCA action because it concluded that Parker's exercised right to be absent for four days was actually more like a furlough than mere release from the day's duties. Id. at 1014 (emphasis added). The court rejected the active duty distinction based on subjectivity to recall advanced by the government by noting the government's admission that even soldiers on furlough can be recalled, yet those soldiers have an FTCA action if injured. Id. at n. 10. 33 In Pierce, the serviceman requested and received permission to leave the military base for the afternoon to take care of personal business. As Pierce was traveling on his motorcycle on a public highway, a naval recruiter, acting within the scope of his official duties, negligently collided with him and Pierce's resulting injuries caused him to be seventy-percent disabled. Aligning that case with Brooks and Parker, our court determined that by exercis[ing] the right to be absent from regular duty, the serviceman attains a status much akin to being on furlough, which enables the service member on a pass to maintain an FTCA action. Pierce, 813 F.2d at 353; see Parker, 611 F.2d at 1013 (distinguishing the claimants in Zoula v. United States, 217 F.2d 81, 82-83 (5th Cir.1954), who had merely the unexercised right to a pass (emphasis added)). 34 Pursuant to the authorization of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Whitley was off-duty during the extended time that he was in the United States to participate in the DWRRT tour. 20 Lieutenant Colonel Santa-Olalla considered the rugby tour a reward or recreation for the DWRRT members who wanted to participate in it. Lieutenant Whitley and his teammates voluntarily had requested and received authorization to be absent from their regular duty status and to travel to the United States to play in various rugby matches. 21 The DWRRT players did not wear their uniforms or dog tags, and they did not refer to one another by military rank. 22 They financed their tour, including trip insurance, with non-military funds, traveled to the United States on a civilian airplane, and paid for their own lodgings. 23 Given these factual indicia, we conclude that Lieutenant Whitley's off-duty status relative to his British regiment was analogous to furlough as in Brooks. 35
36 [T]he situs of the injury is an important factor in determining whether the activity is 'incident to service,'  Pierce, 813 F.2d at 353, especially with vehicular collisions, Parker, 611 F.2d at 1013. If the soldier is on furlough and off the military reservation, Brooks teaches that an action lies under the FTCA. Id. at 1014. Even a service member's returning to a military base but outside the premises line permits an FTCA action. 24 See id.; Pierce, 813 F.2d at 353 n. 6 (allowing FTCA recovery, although injured serviceman on a pass was approximately 500 feet from the boundary of the military reservation when the motor vehicular accident occurred). 37 It is undisputed that the fatal accident for Lieutenant Whitley occurred on Interstate 85, a public highway in Coweta County, outside Newnan, Georgia. This site is many miles from Fort Benning, where the DWRRT was staying while in the United States. With respect to location, this case is analogous to Brooks and Pierce, where the injuries to the service members occurred off a military base and were not considered to be incident to service. 38
39 We finally must consider the activity in which Lieutenant Whitley was engaged when he was killed. In distinguishing Brooks, the Feres Court determined that a service member injured on leave is not analogous to that of a soldier injured while performing duties under orders. Feres, 340 U.S. at 146, 71 S.Ct. at 159 (emphasis added); see Zoula, 217 F.2d at 82 n. 1 (A person on a furlough or leave is not subject to military duty, although he may actually spend the time provided in the furlough or the leave on a military reservation.). Significant to the Parker court's conclusion that the serviceman was not acting incident to service when he was injured was that he was not directly subject to military control; he was not under the compulsion of military orders; he was not performing any military mission. Parker, 611 F.2d at 1014. In Pierce, we recognized that to construe any conceivable personal activity as 'incident to service' because that activity happened to be performed by a member of the armed forces would preclude service members from bringing FTCA actions merely by virtue of the fact that the claimants are wearing a United States uniform. Pierce, 813 F.2d at 354. By contrast, we determined regarding the death of a United States Navy Airman Recruit while participating in sea rescue training that [d]espite the extreme circumstances surrounding [his] death, we cannot escape the fact his death arose out of an activity incident to his military service. Kitowski v. United States, 931 F.2d 1526, 1530 (11th Cir.1991). 40 At the time of his fatal accident, Lieutenant Whitley was traveling with his DWR rugby teammates, including civilians, from Atlanta where the British team had played a rugby match and socialized with a civilian team. Neither Lieutenant Whitley nor any DWRRT member was subject to the supervision or command of the Army. 25 The rugby tour for the DWRRT members was not organized by the British Army in any way; the commanding officer of the DWR merely gave the rugby players who wanted to participate permission to be absent from their regular duties for the duration of the tour. Participation in the rugby tour was purely voluntary for both the DWR and civilian team members. 41 Specifically, Lieutenant Whitley was asleep when he sustained lethal injuries in the single-vehicle accident caused by the negligence of Specialist Kanney. Unlike the Feres serviceman who died while asleep when his base barracks burned, clearly incident to his service or he would not have been there, 26 Lieutenant Whitley and the other DWR members as well as civilian rugby teammates were in the United States to participate in the rugby tour by choice, and he had authorization from his commanding officer to be absent from his regular duties. In this furlough-like status, Lieutenant Whitley's situation was distinct from that of the Kitowski serviceman, who was actively participating in a military exercise when he died. 27 42 Additionally, cases dealing with recreational activities made available to service members on a military reservation because they are serving in the armed forces are inapposite. Like sleeping, participating in recreational activities is part of the daily lives of service members residing on a military base. The former Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court and expressly adopted its reasoning in a case where an Army staff sergeant riding his motorcycle from a military softball practice was killed in a collision with a post shuttle bus. See Watkins v. United States, 462 F.Supp. 980 (S.D.Ga.1977), aff'd, 587 F.2d 279 (5th Cir.1979) (per curiam). Determining that Feres barred FTCA recovery, the court reasoned that the serviceman's active duty status, 28 the location of the accident on the military base, and the fact that he was leaving a military softball team practice made Feres dispositive. 29 See id. at 988. 43 In contrast, the Watkins court observed that an 'off-duty' serviceman who is injured off-base in a traffic accident totally unrelated to his military service should now receive the benefits of the Brooks rationale. Id. Pierce exemplifies this reasoning. Similarly, the court applied Brooks to allow an FTCA action when a serviceman on a twenty-four-hour pass was traveling from his off-base residence to an off-base bird hunt and his vehicle collided with a negligently driven Army vehicle. See Hand v. United States, 260 F.Supp. 38 (M.D.Ga.1966). Holding that a pass is equivalent to a furlough with respect to military duties, the court explained: There is no difference in the freedom which the man enjoys. In both instances the man is relieved from military duty during the period specified. Id. at 41 (emphasis added). 44 Particularly significant to this case are cases where FTCA actions have been permitted based on Brooks because the service members were not taking advantage of a military privilege or status during their leave or off-duty time; instead, they were engaging in civilian activities on a par with civilians. The service member in Pierce, for example, had used his afternoon leave to accomplish personal errands and to eat lunch off base; the accident that resulted in his injuries occurred as he was returning to base from having engaged in these activities. Other circuits have decided cases similarly. 30 Common to the respective courts' decisions in these cases was the determination that the service members were not acting pursuant to military orders or any differently than civilians when they were injured or killed. Consequently, the courts concluded that the service members were not acting incident to service at the time of their injuries or death and, therefore, permitted FTCA actions. 45 In this case, Lieutenant Whitley was asleep and a passenger returning from a rugby match in Atlanta with his DWR teammates when he was fatally injured in the single-vehicle accident. Civilians were members of the British rugby team, which shows that this was a recreational event rather than a military exercise. The rugby match that the DWRRT had played was with a civilian rugby club in Atlanta. Lieutenant Whitley was not on a military mission or acting under military orders at the time of his death. Thus, at the time of the fatal accident for Lieutenant Whitley, there was no military purpose to this particular rugby match and the concomitant transportation to and from Atlanta for it. 31 We conclude that the civilian rugby match in which Lieutenant Whitley had participated and the socializing afterward were solely recreational and in no way connected to any military mission of either the British or American armed forces. Consequently, neither the recreational activities in which Lieutenant Whitley had been involved prior to his fatal injuries nor his sleep at the time of his death was incident to his military service. 46
47 Having analyzed each of the three factors that our circuit uses to determine whether the activity in which a service member was engaged at the time of injury was incident to service, we must consider the totality of these circumstances. See Pierce, 813 F.2d at 353; Parker, 611 F.2d at 1013. First, Lieutenant Whitley was on a furlough-like or authorized off-duty status when he was killed because of the negligence of an Army driver. He was under no military orders for the duration of the rugby tour in the United States. He had volunteered for the trip and received permission to go from his commanding officer. He primarily financed his participation in the rugby tour, and he observed no military protocol during the tour, such as being addressed by his rank. Thus, his authorized absence from duty was analogous to furlough in Brooks, particularly given the duration and distance of the trip. See Hand, 260 F.Supp. at 41-42 (We, therefore, attach no significance to the fact that in the Brooks case the man was on what is known as 'furlough' and in this case the Plaintiff was on what is known as a 'pass' and conclude that the fact that the man was on a pass instead of a furlough would not tend to make a quail hunt 'an activity incident to (his) military service.'  (alteration in original)). 48 Second, the single-vehicle accident that resulted in Lieutenant Whitley's death occurred on a public highway far from the Fort Benning military reservation, where he was staying with his rugby teammates while in the United States. Third, Lieutenant Whitley was asleep when he died and a passenger in a commercially leased van. There was nothing about the preceding rugby match and socialization with a civilian team or the travel involved with playing the rugby match that made it a military exercise. Considering these factors cumulatively, we conclude that Lieutenant Whitley was not engaged in an activity incident to service at the time of his death. See Brooks, 337 U.S. at 52, 69 S.Ct. at 920 (determining that the injuries sustained by the servicemen brothers in the automobile accident with another serviceman had nothing to do with the Brooks' army careers). Accordingly, Feres does not prevent the FTCA actions by Lieutenant Whitley's parents and estate in this case.