Opinion ID: 77837
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Feres as a basis for private contractor immunity where sensitive military judgments may be involved

Text: As demonstrated above, private contractors are, at most, entitled to a more constricted form of derivative Feres immunity. The Feres incident to service test is too broad for the purpose of protecting private contractor agents performing sensitive military functions. But a narrower formulation might conceivably be appropriate for the purpose of protecting this kind of military judgment. It might be said that the political question doctrine, with its explicit concerns regarding justiciability and separation of powers, exhausts the category of military judgments insulated from judicial review. We are, however, willing to entertain the possibility that the political question doctrine, while it informs this strand of Feres, does not necessarily exhaust the category of sensitive military functions that should be protected from judicial scrutiny. We might, for example, accord derivative Feres immunity to a private contractor agent across some spectrum narrower than incident to service but possibly broader than political question. This might conceivably include suits involving quintessential or peculiarly military judgments that courts should not hear as a matter of prudence, rather than a matter of constitutional law. Even if such an immunity is warranted, however, we do not believe that the Feres doctrine is an appropriate ground upon which to build it. The reason is that an immunity built on Feres would only prevent soldiers and would not prevent civiliansfrom bringing suit against private military contractors making or executing sensitive military judgments. The immunity would necessarily operate in this way because derivative immunity can be no broader than the sovereign immunity that grounds it, and the government's Feres immunity only extends to suits brought by soldiers. See, e.g., Boyle, 487 U.S. at 510, 108 S.Ct. at 2517-18 ( Feres covers only service-related injuries, and not injuries caused by the military to civilians). Feres immunity bars only soldiersnot civilianseven where the civilian suit would require the court to examine a potentially sensitive military judgment. Compare Shearer, 473 U.S. at 58, 105 S.Ct. at 3043 ( Feres barred suit by soldier against government for negligent supervision of tortfeasor) with Sheridan v. United States, 487 U.S. 392, 402-03, 108 S.Ct. 2449, 2456, 101 L.Ed.2d 352 (1988) ( Feres did not bar suit by civilian against government for negligent supervision of tortfeasor); see also Taber, 67 F.3d at 1047 ( Feres does not bar suits against the government when the injured plaintiff is a civilian. This remains the case even though the injurer is in the military and military discipline is directly involved.) (emphasis in original). Because derivative sovereign immunity cannot be broader than the sovereign immunity that grounds it, this means that a hypothetical sensitive military judgments immunity grounded on Feres could only prevent soldiers from bringing suit. This consequence means that derivative Feres immunity is an inappropriate vehicle for a sensitive military judgments immunity for private contractor agents. In the first place, it would not be effective to protect sensitive military judgments from judicial review because it would not bar suits brought by civilians that implicate such judgments. As an example, any such immunity, as applied to the plane crash in the instant case, would not apply to civilians on board the plane. The employees of Presidential itself (three of whom perished in the accident) could sue Presidential for Presidential's negligence. Those suits would not be barred by the hypothetical derivative Feres immunity tailored to protect sensitive military judgments. Yet they would present the very same threat of subjecting sensitive military judgments to second-guessing by a court. On top of the ineffectiveness of an immunity grounded on Feres, it would also be inequitable because it would single out soldiers for special disfavor in the courts of law. As noted above, Feres applies only to soldiers, so derivative Feres immunity, even if restricted to sensitive military judgments, could apply only to soldiers as well. But that would have consequences that belie common sense. For example, assume the hypothetical situation of a sensitive military function being performed by a private contractor agent that does not fall within the category of cases barred by the political question doctrine. [21] Assume also three people injured by the contractor's performance of the sensitive military function: a soldier, a civilian employee of the private contractor, and a journalist. If we extended Feres derivatively to the private contractor, the soldier could not sue the contractor. The employee of the private contractor could sue because, by hypothesis, the suit would not be barred by the political question doctrine. And so could the journalist, for the same reason. There is simply no principled reason why this result should obtain. We refuse to single out soldiers who sacrifice their lives and limbs for our country for special disfavor, even for the laudatory purpose of protecting sensitive military judgments from judicial interference. As a result, we must hold that derivative Feres immunity does not exist in this case. Three of the four recognized Feres rationales do not apply to private contractors. And while protecting sensitive military judgments could conceivably ground an immunity, Feres is an inappropriate vehicle because it would single out soldiers and would not protect sensitive military judgments in suits brought by anyone else (including journalists or private contractor employees). This is not the first time that Feres has been found to be an inappropriate ground upon which to build a protection for private contractors who are involved with sensitive military judgments. In Boyle v. United Technologies Corp., 487 U.S. 500, 108 S.Ct. 2510, 101 L.Ed.2d 442 (1988), the Court held that military contractors have an affirmative defense in a products liability suit where (1) the United States approved reasonably precise specifications; (2) the equipment conformed to those specifications; and (3) the supplier warned the United States about the dangers in the use of the equipment that were known to the supplier but not to the United States. Boyle, 487 U.S. at 512, 108 S.Ct. at 2518. But the Court refused to ground this so-called military contractor defense on Feres, for the following reasons: [I]t seems to us that the Feres doctrine, in its application to the present problem, logically produces results that are in some respects too broad and in some respects too narrow. Too broad, because if the Government contractor defense is to prohibit suit against the manufacturer whenever Feres would prevent suit against the Government, then even injuries caused to military personnel by a helicopter purchased from stock . . . would be covered. Since Feres prohibits all service-related tort claims against the Government, a contractor defense that rests upon it should prohibit all service-related tort claims against the manufacturermaking inexplicable the three limiting criteria for contractor immunity. . . . On the other hand, reliance on Feres produces (or logically should produce) results that are in another respect too narrow. Since that doctrine covers only service-related injuries, and not injuries caused by the military to civilians, it could not be invoked to prevent, for example, a civilian's suit against the manufacturer of fighter planes, based on a state tort theory claiming harm from what is alleged to be needlessly high levels of noise produced by the jet engines. Yet we think that the character of the jet engines the Government orders for its fighter planes cannot be regulated by state tort law, no more in suits by civilians than in suits by members of the Armed Services. Boyle, 487 U.S. at 510-11, 108 S.Ct. at 2517-18. The reasons why the Supreme Court rejected Feres as a basis for the military contractor defense in Boyle are essentially the same reasons why we refuse to ground the hypothesized sensitive military judgment immunity on Feres today. The Court in Boyle recognized that reliance on Feres would produce results that are too broad, because the incident to service test would include suits against contractors that did not implicate the policies the Court was concerned about in Boyle. Similarly, in this case, an immunity built on Feres would be too broad, because incident to service would cover tort suits that do not implicate sensitive military judgments. Then in Boyle, the Court held that a defense grounded on Feres would be too narrow because, even where the policies the Court was concerned about were present, civilians could still bring suit, thus vitiating the purpose of the immunity. Here too, an immunity built on Feres would be too narrow because it would only protect against suits implicating sensitive military judgments that are brought by soldiers, and not against those brought by civilians, or even employees of the private contractor itself. We emphasize that we do not mean to foreclose the possibility of an immunity that is broader than political question but narrower than incident to service. We simply hold that any such immunity must, if it is to have any basis in reason, apply to civilians as well as soldiers: including the employees of private contractors, and other civilians. On the other hand, we readily acknowledge that this form of immunity may not exist if the political question doctrine is enough to protect private contractor agents performing sensitive military functions. But we decline in the instant case to reach out and (a) decide whether such an immunity exists, or (b) assuming it exists, define the scope of such immunity. [22] At every stage of this litigation, Presidential has relied exclusively on derivative Feres immunity. We do not ordinarily entertain arguments when they were not presented to the district court. See Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1331 (11th Cir.2004). We certainly do not reach out to make an argument for a party that the party did not advance in the district court or in this Court, especially when that party expressly placed all of its reliance on another argument. We took a similar approach in Shaw, where we reserved judgment on the derivative Feres immunity issue we now decide, even though it was potentially applicable, because it was not presented to the court below. See Shaw, 778 F.2d at 740 (The agency/sovereign immunity theory was neither presented fully to nor ruled on by the court below.). Moreover, not only has Presidential relied exclusively on Feres derivative immunity, it has relied exclusively on the broadest form of that immunity. Presidential did not even propose the limited version of derivative Feres immunity we hypothesized (and rejected) abovei.e., the kind that theoretically protects only sensitive military functions. Instead, Presidential has argued during this entire litigation exclusively for the broad, incident to service form of derivative Feres immunity. Such a broad immunity is triply flawed: it does not further the only Feres rationale that applies to a private contractor; it is ineffective because it only applies to soldiers; and it is inequitable because it singles out soldiers who give their bodies and lives for their country for special disfavor. [23] Given that Presidential consciously relied exclusively on Feres (and the broadest form of it at that), we will hold Presidential to its choice, and refuse to develop a hypothetical alternative kind of immunity out of whole cloth. We thus expressly do not decide whether there is a sensitive military function immunity that protects a private contractor agent, and that exceeds the bounds of the political question doctrine. We decide only that derivative Feres immunity is an inappropriate vehicle for such an immunity (if it in fact exists). To recognize a derivative Feres immunity for private military contractors would provide a protection which is both too broad and too narrow in light of the justification therefor; and to do so would be in significant tension with the Supreme Court's Boyle decision. Because derivative Feres is the only kind of immunity that has been argued to us, we will not reach out to address the question of what other immunity might be available for private contractor agents. [24] We therefore turn to Presidential's contention that this suit is barred by the political question doctrine.