Court Opinion

ID: 9420055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:44.876817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:22.131683
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
dissenting.
If the defendant in this case had been held liable for negligently inflicting personal injuries on a civilian, it would have been obliged to pay, among other items of damage, the reasonable cost of resulting care by his doctor, hospital and nurse, and the earnings lost during the period of disability. If the civilian bore this cost himself, it would be part of his own damage; if the civilian were a wife and the expense fell upon her husband, he would be entitled to recover it; if the civilian were a child, it would be recoverable by the parent. The long-established law is that a wrongdoer who commits a tort against a civilian must make good to somebody these elements of the costs resulting from his wrongdoing.
What the Court now holds is that if the victim of negligence is a soldier, the wrongdoer does not have to make good these items of expense to the one who bears them. The United States is under the duty to furnish medical services, hospitalization and nursing to a soldier and loses his services while his pay goes on. These costs, which essentially fall upon the United States by reason of the sovereign-soldier relationship, the Court holds cannot be recovered by the United States from the wrongdoer as the parent can in the case of a child or the husband can in the case of a wife. As a matter of justice, I see no reason why taxpayers of the United States should relieve a wrongdoer of part of his normal liability for personal *318injury when the victim of negligence happens to be a soldier. And I cannot see why the principles of tort law that allow a husband or parent to recover do not logically sustain the right of the United States to recover in this case.
But the Court has qualms about applying these well-known principles of tort law to this novel state of facts, unless directed to do so by Congress. The law of torts has been developed almost exclusively by the judiciary in England and this country by common law methods. With few exceptions, tort liability does not depend upon legislation. If there is one function which I should think we would feel free to exercise under a Constitution which vests in us judicial power, it would be to apply well-established common law principles to a case whose only novelty is in facts. The courts of England, whose scruples against legislating are at least as sensitive as ours normally are, have not hesitated to say that His Majesty’s Treasury may recover outlay to cure a British soldier from injury by a negligent wrongdoer and the wages he was meanwhile paid. Attorney-General v. Valle-Jones, [1935] 2 K. B. 209. I think we could hold as much without being suspected of trying to usurp legislative function.