Opinion ID: 389247
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Close Case and Other Precedents

Text: 42 Finally, appellant relies on several statutes and prior cases dealing with various aspects of the District-federal relationship, acknowledgedly a sui generis one, to provide a basis for bringing Lorton prisoners sentenced in a federal court under the Act. The most important precedent he cites, and upon which the district court relied in denying the appellee's motion to dismiss, is this court's decision in Close v. United States, 397 F.2d 686 (D.C.Cir.1968). That case held that a federal prisoner injured through the negligence of his custodians at the District of Columbia Jail could sue the United States under the FTCA. In Close, decided both before Logue and the advent of the Home Rule legislation, 48 the court surmised, despite an affidavit from a Bureau official attesting that the District of Columbia Jail was not under the jurisdiction of the federal government, that the Attorney General's acknowledged legal custody over the prisoner meant it must be true or at least it does not appear from the record to the contrary that, as to this federal prisoner, the Attorney General had some degree of power, commensurate with his continuing responsibility, to supervise the D.C. jailer in his handling of this particular prisoner. 397 F.2d at 687 & n.2. However, the Close case was decided before the Supreme Court definitively held in Logue that the federal government must have actual control over the physical conduct of prison employees engaged in the supervision and treatment of a prisoner at the time the injury occurred, not merely the legal authority to designate the place of his confinement, in order to hold it liable under the FTCA. Logue, like Cannon, had been committed to the custody of the Attorney General; yet the Court found that legal control insufficient to invoke liability in light of the state jailer's control over the way in which the prisoner's day-to-day supervision and care were carried out. This court is no longer free, especially in view of the contrary evidence contained in this record, 49 to surmise that the legal control existing in Close and in this case necessarily gives rise to the physical control deemed essential in Logue to accrue liability under the FTCA. To the extent Close holds that an actual demonstration of federal control over day-to-day supervisory operations of the prison is unnecessary for FTCA liability for injuries to prisoners in the legal custody of the Attorney General, we believe it has been superseded by Logue. 50 43 The other cases cited by the appellant, which hold that the Attorney General has the power to determine furlough regulations for Lorton, 51 and that Lorton prisoners sentenced in United States district court have federal habeas corpus rights 52 are also inapposite, as those holdings arise from the power of a federal court to ensure that the custodians of persons it sentences are not violating their constitutional rights and from the undisputed legal custody of the Attorney General over all District of Columbia prisoners and his statutory right to transfer them at his will. 53 That legal custody, as we have said, no longer suffices as either an independent basis for jurisdiction under the FTCA or as a basis for inferring the kind of day-to-day custodial control that Logue demands for such jurisdiction.