Court Opinion

ID: 9476521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:57:59.906727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:21.943771
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The opinion of the court states cogently why the court issued its first opinion and why in deference to United States v. Johnson the court has withdrawn that opinion. The court also registers the unease caused by the judicial gloss on the congressional waiver of sovereign immunity. I concur in the opinion of the court and write to emphasize other anomalies caused by the application of Feres.
First. Common sense suggests that a single tortious act should not result in different legal consequences for different victims. Feres dictates differently. United Air Lines v. Wiener, 335 F.2d 379, 404 (9th Cir.) cert. dismissed, 379 U.S. 951, 85 S.Ct. 452, 13 L.Ed.2d 549 (1964) (civilian passengers recover, servicemen passengers do not when an Air Force plane negligently hits a commercial airliner). So here the government settles the claim of the estate of Baby Atkinson and refuses the claim of the baby’s mother.
Second. To visit the status of a parent upon a child and so bar recovery by the child seems to be as primitive as punishing a child for his or her parents’ fault — an outmoded and unconstitutional procedure. See Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68, 88 *207S.Ct. 1509, 20 L.Ed.2d 436 (1968). Under Feres a child with no connection with military service and no duty of military obedience is barred from recovering for an injury when the injury was incurred through government-inflicted injury on the child’s enlisted parent. Monaco v. United States, 661 F.2d 129 (9th Cir.1981) (birth-defective child of serviceman exposed to radiation denied recovery). That the government did not invoke this rule against Baby Atkinson is a tribute to its humanity but does little to mitigate the harshness of the general rule.
Third. A mother of a child is not merely an individual. She is in a relationship — a relationship that affects her existence. The child she is carrying is not of course a portion of her body like a limb or an organ. Such a notion was common in nineteenth century biology. See, e.g., Dietrich v. Inhabitants of Northampton, 138 Mass. 14 (1884) (per Holmes, J.). The notion has been exploded by twentieth-century advances in biology and fetology. W. Liley, “Experiments with Uterine Fetal Instrumentation” in M. Kaback and C. Valenti, eds. Intrauterine Fetal Visualization (1976) 75. The child, as Liley has concluded, “is responsive to touch, pain and cold.” Id.; see also, M. Rose, “The Secret Brain: Learning Before Birth”, Harper’s, April 1978, 46. But the child while a living sentient organism distinct from his or her maternal carrier has changed that carrier’s being irrevocably. She is now a mother. The relationship is not merely histological. Interaction and interrelationship occur. Enriched in her existence, a mother has a relational dimension that should not be ignored. Although she is a servicewoman, a mother cannot be confined to her military status. With her new relationship she has a new status, which, as the opinion of the court suggests, could be the basis for acknowledging that, at least as to her, the sovereign’s statutory waiver of immunity should hold and the sharp surgery of Feres be suspended.