Court Opinion

ID: 6920413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 22:59:19.636674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:06:47.056520
License: Public Domain

MURRAH, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I agree that the government is liable in these cases as a private person in accordance with Oklahoma law, i. e., the place where the alleged negligent act or omission occurred. I also agree that the inapplicability of the Oklahoma wrongful death statute to deaths outside the state does not preclude the right to recover in cases like these, even though a private person would not be liable according to Oklahoma law under the same circumstances.
We know that few, if any, state wrongful death statutes have any extraterritorial effect. If, therefore, the right to recover under the Tort Claims Act in cases like these is made to depend upon the extraterritorial effect of the wrongful death statute of the place of the negligent act, the Act would be inapplicable to all such cases. Surely Congress did not intend any such anomalous result.
The majority avoids this blind spot in the law by resort to the Oklahoma conflict of laws rule, which authorizes maintenance of a suit in Oklahoma for wrongful death occurring outside the state, in accordance with the law of the state where death resulted. And see Fenton v. Sinclair Refining Co., 206 Okl. 19, 240 P.2d 748. The effect of this process of reasoning is to apply the substantive law of the place of death rather than the law of the place of the negligent act. The end result seems contrary to our agreed interpretation of the Tort Claims Act. Indeed, under this theory, these suits might have been instituted and maintained in any forum which authorizes them, with liability governed by the law of the place where death occurred, i. e., Missouri. Thus, if the suits had been commenced in Missouri, the Missouri court would have looked to the law of Oklahoma as the place where the negligent act occurred, and the Oklahoma conflicts rule would apply the law of Missouri as the place where death occurred.
In my view, Congress intended to avoid this circuitous stacking of one conflicts rule on another in order to arrive at controlling substantive law. Rather, it is my view that the Tort Claims Act provides its own conflicts rule, that is, the law of the place of the negligent act. In other words, we rest upon the law of that state and look no further. If Congress had intended otherwise, it could have simply conferred jurisdiction upon the courts to hear and decide claims for damages for death caused by the negligence of the United States “under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant” and stopped there. In this setting, these suits would be maintainable in Oklahoma in accordance with the law of Missouri, by virtue of the Oklahoma conflicts rule, that is, the law of the place where the accident occurred. When, however, Congress went on to say in effect that the government would be liable to the claimant as if a private person “in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred,” it thereupon removed the traditional cloak of immunity and left the government standing as a private person, but prescribed the law and the conditions under which it would become liable.
Such is the import and result of Eastern Airlines v. Union Trust Co., 95 U.S. App.D.C. 189, 221 F.2d 62. I would follow the majority view in that case' and apply the Oklahoma wrongful death statute.