Opinion ID: 4558232
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: eleventh circuit precedent applying gaubert

Text: Our decision in Autery v. United States is the most instructive here because it involved an FTCA claim alleging negligent conduct by the U.S. National Park Service. 992 F.2d at 1524. As a result of the Park Service’s alleged negligence, a rotten tree fell and struck a vehicle, injuring a passenger and killing the driver. Id. at 1524. There was no mandatory statute, regulation, or policy controlling the Park Service’s process for inspecting and maintaining trees, so the first part of Gaubert’s test was satisfied. Id. at 1530. In applying the second part of Gaubert’s test, our Court in Autery identified several policy considerations that justify reliance on the discretionary-function exception. The Park Service, we noted, likely needed to balance several competing interests, including “the risk of harm from trees in various locations, the need for other safety programs, the extent to which the natural state of the forest should be preserved, and the limited financial and human resources available.” Id. at 1531. We refused to engage in any “judicial ‘second-guessing’” of the Park Service’s exception applied, and because it did not apply the two-step analysis now followed, Rayonier does not control our decision.”). The dissent also cites Anderson v. United States, 55 F.3d 1379, 1384 (9th Cir. 1995), but that decision, although decided after Gaubert, also does not discuss at the all the discretionaryfunction exception to the FTCA’s general waiver of sovereign immunity. 18 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 19 of 132 balancing of those interests. Id. (quoting Varig Airlines, 467 U.S. at 814, 104 S. Ct. at 2765). We concluded the choices involved in implementing a tree inspection plan were “grounded in social, economic and public policy,” such that the discretionary-function exception applied. See id. at 1530–31. We therefore upheld the application of the exception to bar relief for the government’s allegedly negligent failure to detect and remove hazardous, rotten trees in a national park. Id. at 1524, 1531. Similarly, in Hughes v. United States, our Court applied the discretionaryfunction exception to bar recovery for the U.S. Postal Service’s alleged negligent failure to provide adequate security and monitor its parking lot. 110 F.3d at 766, 768–69. Two assailants shot plaintiff Hughes who was in her car in a post office parking lot, and she sustained serious bodily injury. Id. at 766. We found no applicable statute, regulation, or policy that prescribed a specific course of conduct for the U.S. Postal Service to follow and thus concluded the first part of Gaubert’s test was satisfied. Id. at 768. In applying the second part of Gaubert’s test, our Court in Hughes refused to second guess the resource-allocation decisions of the U.S. Postal Service employees, who were faced with deciding how best to “serve customers in a prompt, reliable, and efficient manner.” Id. at 768–69. Citing to Gaubert, we recognized that “[d]ay-to-day management . . . regularly requires judgment as to 19 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 20 of 132 which of a range of permissible courses is the wisest.” Id. at 768 (alteration in original) (quoting Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 325, 111 S. Ct. at 1275). Post-Gaubert, the discretionary-function exception protects certain decisions even at the operational or day-to-day level. Id.; see also Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 325, 111 S. Ct. at 1275. And as the Supreme Court has long recognized, the discretionary-function exception’s scope extends beyond high-level policymakers and includes government officials at any rank exercising discretion. See Varig Airlines, 467 U.S. at 813, 104 S. Ct. at 2764. “[I]t is the nature of the conduct, rather than the status of the actor, that governs whether the discretionary function exception applies in a given case.” Id. at 813, 104 S. Ct. at 2764. In yet another case, Cranford v. United States, our Court applied the discretionary-function exception to decisions of U.S. Coast Guard officials in marking and choosing not to remove a submerged shipwreck. 466 F.3d 955, 956 (11th Cir. 2006). Importantly, the government had, years previously, deliberately sunk the ship in question to serve as a breakwater. Id. at 957. The Coast Guard placed a marker to signal the presence of the shipwreck, but the plaintiffs, whose motor boat struck the submerged ship, alleged the marking was inadequate. Id. at 956–57. In Cranford, our Court concluded the Coast Guard’s decisions related to the manner of marking the submerged shipwreck inherently involved “elements of 20 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 21 of 132 judgment or choice.” Id. at 959. We reasoned that “decisions in marking a wreck involve social, political, and economic policy considerations, such as taking into account the knowledge and customs of international mariners, balancing the needs of pleasure and commercial watercraft, and evaluating agency resource constraints.” Id. at 960. We acknowledged that financial considerations, on their own, do not necessarily render a decision one that is “susceptible to policy analysis,” since “budgetary constraints are almost always important to government decisions.” Id. (quotation marks omitted) (quoting Ochran, 117 F.3d at 502). But as we noted, there were considerations at play beyond financial ones, and even the resource-allocation considerations were not wholly financial in nature. Id. (noting that the relevant concerns about “resource constraints . . . include but are not limited to financial concerns”). In the past, our Court also has identified instances in which a government employee’s exercise of judgment or choice is not “susceptible to policy analysis.” The most notable case is Swafford v. United States, which involved the government’s alleged failure to properly maintain a staircase on a campground owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 839 F.3d 1365, 1367– 68 (11th Cir. 2016). Plaintiff Swafford walked from Campsite 23, where he was staying on the campground, to Campsite 26. Id. at 1367. He then fell and injured himself while descending the site’s wooden stairway. Id. The Corps had 21 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 22 of 132 contracted with a third party, Anderson Construction Company, “to provide all maintenance, repair, and operations of facilities, vehicles, and equipment” on the campground. Id. at 1368 (quotation marks omitted). The Corps’s contract specifically provided for Anderson’s “complete inspection, maintenance, and repair of all campsites and stairways necessary to keep them in safe working condition.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). Plaintiff Swafford alleged that the Corps “negligently and carelessly caused, allowed, and/or permitted a hazardous condition to exist and remain as to the steps at Campsite 26.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). He further alleged that any negligence on Anderson’s part was imputable to the Corps and that the Corps had “ratified Anderson’s negligent failure to inspect and/or repair the steps at Campsite 26 . . . by not requiring the repair of the defective and hazardous steps.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). In Swafford, our Court determined that, under the first part of Gaubert’s test, the maintenance of the stairs involved the exercise of judgment and discretion, as there was no evidence that a federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically required that the Corps inspect, maintain, and repair the previously built stairways at Campsite 26. Id. at 1370. Under the second part of Gaubert’s test, however, our Court rejected the idea that the Corps could simply choose not to maintain the stairs in a safe condition after explicitly undertaking responsibility for doing so, 22 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 23 of 132 noting that “the Corps’s decision to build and ‘operate’ a staircase on the Campground gives rise to a[n] . . . obligation to inspect and maintain that staircase in a safe condition.” Id. at 1371. While the Corps’s initial decision to build and undertake responsibility for maintaining the staircase was a discretionary judgment, the Corps’s subsequent failure to maintain the staircase in a safe condition was not a permissible exercise of policy judgment. Id. at 1371–72. The Swafford Court acknowledged that the Supreme Court had disavowed any bright-line discretionary-function rule that relies on “a dichotomy between ‘discretionary functions’ and ‘operational functions.’” Id. at 1371. But plaintiff Swafford’s argument, this Court reasoned, did not rely on any such distinction; rather, Swafford argued that “once the Corps exercised its discretion to build and maintain the stairs, failure to maintain them in a safe condition [was] simply not a permissible exercise of policy judgment.” Id. at 1371–72. Agreeing with Swafford, our Court noted that the Corps’s contract with Anderson “specifically required Anderson to inspect, maintain, and repair the Campground’s stairways as necessary to keep them in safe working condition.” Id. at 1372 (quotation marks omitted). As a result, “[w]hatever range of choice the Corps may have had in supervising Anderson, ‘choosing’ to ‘accept’ a dangerously unsafe stairway [was] simply not a permissible exercise of discretion any more than . . . choosing to drive carelessly on official business.” Id. 23 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 24 of 132 With this background in mind, we now turn to the challenged conduct in this case.