Opinion ID: 61659
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lack of Judicially Manageable Standards

Text: A political question looms menacingly when a claim suffers from a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it. Baker, 369 U.S. at 217, 82 S.Ct. 691. One of the most obvious limitations imposed by [Article III, § 1, of the Constitution] is that judicial action must be governed by standard, by rule.  Vieth, 541 U.S. at 278, 124 S.Ct. 1769 (plurality opinion). This is arguably the most critical factor in the political question analysis in the present litigation because at least some of the allegations would draw a court into a consideration of what constituted adequate force protection for the convoys. [4] This factor relates most directly to our later analysis of the elements that the Plaintiffs must prove in order to prevail on their state tort claims. Consequently, our analysis under Baker is incomplete, as it is not until the final section of the opinion  where we review in some depth what the Plaintiffs must prove to prevail  that all considerations will be reviewed. What is the cart, and which is the horse, may be disputed, but we seek to get the proper analytical alignment before we are finished. The district court found that the actions of KBR and the Army regarding the decision-making and control of the Plaintiffs' convoys were so intertwined that to question KBR's decisions is necessarily to question the Army's decisions. Fisher, 454 F.Supp.2d at 642. In the district court's view, in order for the Plaintiffs to prevail, the court would have to determine whether the Army gave sufficient information to KBR about the route the convoys were to take, whether the force protection provisions were sufficient, and whether the military personnel assigned to protect the convoys performed properly. KBR argues that the judiciary will find no manageable standards for assessing the reasonableness of the Army's professional military judgments. The Plaintiffs stress that Army judgments are not the issue. Instead, it is argued that the fraud and negligence claims, leveled only against KBR, are uniquely suited for judicial resolution. American courts have resolved such matters between private litigants since before the adoption of the Constitution. See THE FEDERALIST NO. 80 (Alexander Hamilton). KBR does not deny that the judiciary possesses the expertise and has available the required standards to resolve ordinary fraud and negligence claims, but suggests that the unique factual setting of Plaintiffs' injuries renders these claims extraordinary. KBR's argument and the district court's opinion rely on the fact that the relevant LOGCAP contracts and implementing Task Orders place the responsibility for force protection squarely on the Army. Warding off attacks capable of inflicting injury on these civilian truck drivers was a military duty, not a duty owed by KBR to its employees. KBR's argument in effect is that no matter how unsafe the roads of Iraq might be, KBR's assurances to potential employees could be made under the assumption that the military would provide sufficient force protection for any convoy mission. [5] A court, KBR posits, can neither ignore the Army's role in these cases nor judge whether the Army adequately performed that role. Evaluating this assertion by KBR requires us to understand just what the Plaintiffs must prove to prevail. We defer a detailed discussion of that until later when we review the elements of Texas tort law. The central issue will be causation. If we must examine the Army's contribution to causation, political question will loom large. However, the Plaintiffs have presented a plausible set of facts as to the fraud and misrepresentation claims that might allow causation to be proven under one tort doctrine without questioning the Army's role. That would occur if KBR made assurances to prospective employees that were premised on others, such as the Army, performing in a way that was unrealistic to expect or even impossible. As this court noted long ago, [i]f the misconduct is of a character which, according to the usual experience of mankind, is calculated to afford an opportunity for the intervention of some subsequent cause, the subsequent mischief may be held to be a result of such misconduct. The Mariner, 17 F.2d 253, 254 (5th Cir.1927). The Plaintiffs allege that they accepted employment in a war zone because KBR guaranteed that they would not be dispatched to perform work if conditions were unsafe. If KBR tortiously guaranteed safety when it knew there was no such safety, it may be liable for resulting injuries despite that the immediate causes were determined attackers that could not be thwarted by the best efforts of American defenders. These are the risks to which KBR allegedly promised not to expose the Plaintiffs. We will later discuss the tort standards for judging causation in such cases. We now review how such claims as we just defined them might violate the second Baker factor. The factor is a recognition that courts are fundamentally underequipped to formulate national policies or develop standards for matters not legal in nature. Japan Whaling, 478 U.S. at 230, 106 S.Ct. 2860 (quoting United States ex rel. Joseph v. Cannon, 642 F.2d 1373, 1379 (D.C.Cir.1981)). In Japan Whaling, the Supreme Court faced a challenge to the Secretary of State's refusal to certify that Japan's whaling practices were out of compliance with an international treaty; this certification was allegedly mandated by certain congressional legislation. Id. at 224-28, 106 S.Ct. 2860. The Court acknowledged the premier role which both Congress and the Executive play in [the field of foreign relations], but resolved the challenge nonetheless because a decision in the case call[ed] for applying no more than the traditional rules of statutory construction, and then applying this analysis to the particular set of facts presented below. Id. at 230, 106 S.Ct. 2860. The ready availability of legal standards and the traditional role of the judiciary in interpreting statutes compelled the court to resolve the matter even while it recognized that its decision may have significant political overtones. Id. By contrast, the court in Cannon could find no judicial standards by which to resolve a claim that a Senator's aide was illegally paid his federal salary while engaging in campaign activity. 642 F.2d at 1375-76. Describing the suit as a challenge to the interworkings of a Senator and his staff member, the court noted the utter absence of statutory, administrative or case law  on which courts rely on to resolve legal disputes  covering this particular matter. Id. at 1379-80. In fact, the Senate itself had failed to reach a consensus on the issue confronting the court. Id. at 1380. Under these circumstances, the court refused to resolve the dispute because doing so would require the judiciary to develop rules of behavior for the Legislative Branch. Id. at 1385; see also Tiffany, 931 F.2d at 278-79 (refusing to craft prudent intercept standard for judging whether North American Air Defense Command's order to intercept potentially hostile aircraft was legally sufficient). The cases before us are closer to Japan Whaling than Cannon or Tiffany. They primarily raise legal questions that may be resolved by the application of traditional tort standards that we discuss below. We are not asked to develop a prudent force protection standard and then impose that standard directly on the Army. See Tiffany, 931 F.2d at 278-79. While the resolution of Plaintiffs' claims may require a court to adjust traditional tort standards to account for the less than hospitable environment in which KBR operated, the court will arguably have no need to develop any standards at all. Cf. McMahon, 502 F.3d at 1363-64. The standards for judging at least the assertions of civilian employers that cause injury to their employees are readily available.