Opinion ID: 687261
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: An Appropriate Test for Applying Feres

Text: 95 Under Brooks, Feres, Stencel, Shearer, and Johnson, an appropriate test for applying the Feres doctrine must respect: (1) the Supreme Court's stated concern for keeping courts away from delicate questions involving military discipline; (2) Feres's clear intention to replace the contingencies of local tort law with a uniform federal scheme; and (3) Feres's original desire that this uniformity is to be achieved through exclusive recourse to the federal system of military death and disability benefits. We believe that these concerns are, in fact, fully captured by the original language in Feres that barred suits by military claimants for all injuries aris[ing] out of or in the course of activity incident to service. 340 U.S. at 146, 71 S.Ct. at 159. 96 As we have noted, this language derives from a familiar phrase (arising out of or in the course of employment), which has a well defined meaning in the context of workers' compensation. This definition, moreover, is closely related to the scope of the government's vicarious liability--since workers' compensation and respondeat superior are both concerned with charging costs to the business enterprise that can be fairly said to engender them. See Childers, 190 Cal.App.3d at 801, 235 Cal.Rptr. at 644. Thus, the two issues in this case coalesce. Because respondeat superior requires the government to pay for third-party injuries that are foreseeable costs of the general military enterprise, and because the federal statutory compensation scheme, buttressed by the Feres doctrine, requires the government to pay for all employment-related injuries that are sustained by servicemembers only through a system of workers' compensation payments, 18 it is appropriate that courts interpret the test for both in similar ways. 19 97 We conclude that the same parameters of employment-related conduct that determine the existence of governmental vicarious liability should also generally define the limits of the Feres doctrine. In deciding whether Feres applies to bar a particular claim, a court should consider whether, at the time of the accident, the military-plaintiff's activity would have imposed respondeat superior liability on the government had that activity injured a civilian. If the answer is yes, then the Feres doctrine applies because the servicemember sustained his or her injuries in the course of activity incident to service. Conversely, if the answer is no, there should be no Feres bar (absent a truly unusual discipline problem)--since the accident occurred outside the scope of military employment and, thus, would not be covered by a normal workers' compensation scheme. 20