Court Opinion

ID: 9470118
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:57:31.346751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:44.468438
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot agree that General McAuliffe’s decision to use a particular strain of bacterium in conducting a simulated biological attack on the City of San Francisco falls within the discretionary function exemption to the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) (1976).
That decision, in my view, was made at the operational, not the planning level of government. As appellant readily concedes, the decision to conduct a simulated attack on San Francisco was a planning decision that did fall within the exemption. It required the weighing of political, social and military factors and, as such, is a decision the judiciary is ill-equipped to review. But once that policy decision was made, its execution necessarily involved a myriad of decisions at the operational level which are not insulated from judicial review.1 The choice of bacterium was one such decision. 8 UK was chosen not on the basis of politi*1232cal or military concerns, but on the basis of medical and scientific ones. Care had to be exercised in selecting a bacterium that would not constitute a health hazard. Whether there was failure to exercise due care in making that decision is the type of question frequently subjected to judicial scrutiny. See United States v. DeCamp, 478 F.2d 1188 (9th Cir.), cert. denied 414 U.S. 924 (1973); Hendry v. United States, 418 F.2d 774, 783 (2d Cir.1969) (“[t]he judgments arrived at by the doctors are not different in complexity from those which courts are accustomed to entertain when tort suits are brought against private physicians.”)
I would hold that the district court had subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiff’s action, but would affirm the judgment on the ground that the district court’s finding that the bacteria used by the Army did not cause Nevin’s death was not clearly erroneous.

. See S.A. Emprasa De Viacao Aerea Rio Gran-dense v. United States, 692 F.2d 1205, 1208 (9th Cir.1982) (“The discretionary function exemption was primarily intended to preclude tort claims arising from decisions by executives or administrators when such decisions require policy choices.”); Miller v. United States, 583 F.2d 857, 866 (6th Cir.1978) (“The discretionary function exception does not insulate the Government from liability for all mistakes of judgment of its agents, but only for significant policy and political decisions, the types of governmental decisions which should not be circumscribed by customary tort standards.”); Griffin v. United States, 500 F.2d 1059, 1066 (3d Cir.1974) (“Where the conduct of Government employees in implementing agency regulations requires only performance of scientific evaluation and not the formulation of policy, we do not believe that the conduct is immunized from judicial review as a ‘discretionary function.’ ”)