Court Opinion

ID: 9442975
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:05:50.664207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:18.749922
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing
The petition for rehearing is denied.
POPE, Circuit Judge.
I concur in the action of the Court in denying the petition for rehearing. The petition for rehearing calls to our attention the necessity of a re-examination of our former conclusion as to the applicability of Article 43 of the Hague Convention of 1907 upon which our decision of June 11, 1951, was predicated. The sources of information mentioned in the petition would indicate that in the Ryukyu Islands, as well as in Germany and in Japan, the United States Military Government, with the approval of the State Department, has promulgated regulations relating to traffic and operation of motor and other vehicles. Thus, departments of the Government, whose judgment we are not authorized to review, have taken a position with respect to Article 43 contrary to that suggested in our first opinion.
The majority of the Court have now proposed to amend the opinion to eliminate the reliance upon Article 43 and to substitute other language, and upon this amendment of the opinion to deny the petition for rehearing. I cannot bring myself to believe that the opinion in the amended form establishes a sound reason for the conclusion reached.
The case presents, I think, much more difficulty than did United States v. Spelar, 338 U.S. 217, 70 S.Ct. 10, 11, 94 L.Ed. 3. *612There the court was able to say: “Sufficient basis for our conclusion lies in the express words of the statute.” The court proceeded to conclude that the accident on the Newfoundland airfield wás one “arising in a foreign coupti:y”, because .the territory there was clearly subject to, the sovereignty of another nation..
It was pointed out in our original opinion that as concerns Okinawa, this “test of sovereignty” furnishes.no solution here. The court therefore proceeded to consider some of the other .things said in the Spelar case where the court; after , consideration of some of the legislative-history .of- the Federal Tort. Claims Act came to the conclusion that the exception here applied was inserted in order, to .avoid. subjecting “the United States. to liabilities, dependent upon the laws of a foreign power.” -The court then proceeded to test the application of the Tort Claims Act by this summarization of the Congressional motive, which the Supreme Court evolved from the legislative history.
., I feel that the application of this test has led the court into .unnecessary difficulties. What we are doing is not , applying the precise language of the Act, but rather a summarization of the. legislative history. , I have in mind:all that Mr. Justice Jackson ^aid in his concurring opinion in Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 1951, 341.U.S. 384, 71 S.Ct. 745, 751, that.“Resort to legislative history i§ only justifiéd where the face of the Act is inescapably ambiguous * '* *.”
I. am of the opinion that the conclusion at -which- we have arrived is the only possible one here for the simple reason that I think it is impossible to conclude that Okinawa .was anything other than a “foreign country” within the meaning of the exception here involved. Plainly, the term “foreign country” is not self-defining, and it is not as definite as a description of weights and measures. It does not mean the same thing today that it meant in generations past, but I think that any person charged with the specific question here involved cannot arrive at any conclusion other than that Okinawa must be held to be within the meaning of the words “foreign country” as used in the Tort Qaims Act.
In arriving at that conclusion, it is not easy to call,.to mind any pat test. It seems to me that arriving at this conclusion is m.erely a matter of common sense. I am impressed by what Judge Yankwich said in Hichino Uyeno v. Acheson, D.C., 96 F.Supp. 510, 515, as follows: “ * * * . it is obvious that the words ‘foreign state’ are not words of art. In using them, the Congress did not have in mind the fine distinctions as to sovereignty of occupied and unoccupied countries which authorities on international law may have ; formulated. They used the word in the sense of ‘otherr ness’. When the Congress speaks of ‘foreign state’, it means a country which is not the United States or its possession'or colony, — an alien country, — other than our own, bearing in mind that the average American, when he speaks of a ‘foreigner’ means an alien, non-American. * * * So here, the interpretation called for is that of common speech and not that derived from abstract speculation on sovereignty as affected by foreign military occupation.”
Since I assume that Congress was using the words here involved as those “of common speech’-’, and that so considered the Island of Okinawa would come within them, I think that this action cannot be maintained for the- simple reason that it is excluded by the express terms of the Act.