Court Opinion

ID: 9467974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:00:56.61673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:37.025937
License: Public Domain

FERGUSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With respect and regret, I am compelled to dissent from part III A of the opinion and the result reached by the majority. The district courts do not have jurisdiction over contract claims against the United States when the amount of the claim exceeds $10,000. Because Ninth Circuit precedent requires that plaintiff’s claim be characterized as contractual, and because that claim is in excess of $10,000, I would remand this case to the district court so that it could be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
*706Contract claims against the United States are controlled by the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491. The district courts and the Court of Claims have concurrent jurisdiction over Tucker Act claims. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(2). Where a claim is for an amount in excess of $10,000, however, the Court of Claims has exclusive jurisdiction. See id.; 28 U.S.C. § 1491. Tort claims against the United States are controlled by the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”), 28 U.S.C. § 2671 et seq. District courts have exclusive jurisdiction over FTCA suits. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). Because plaintiff alleges damages in excess of $10,000, if her claim is contractual, only the Court of Claims has authority to entertain it.
Plaintiff concedes that the United States’ duty toward her is a contractual duty. She contends, however, that the breach of this duty — failure to replace a faucet — permits her to elect an action in either contract or tort. This court has considered such an argument in the past and attempted to distinguish those cases which are essentially contractual, and therefore governed by the Tucker Act, from those that sound in tort, and are therefore governed by the FTCA. Woodbury v. United States, 313 F.2d 291 (9th Cir. 1963).
Woodbury established that an action characterized as arising from a tort was, for the limited purpose of determining whether the FTCA or Tucker Act applied, essentially a contract action if government liability is predicated on: “(1) an express or implied promise by the government ... and (2) a wrongful breach of that promise.” Id., at 296. In the instant case, plaintiff predicates the United States’ liability on (1) an alleged promise by the Veterans Administration to replace a faucet, and (2) the breach of that promise. Plaintiff does not contend that the Veterans Administration had an independent duty to replace the faucet. Rather, plaintiff argues and the majority agrees, that the Veterans Administration’s sole obligation arose from the promise to replace. Under our decision in Woodbury, when a cause of action is founded solely upon the breach of an obligation created by contract, suit can be brought only according to the dictates of the Tucker Act. Id. Accordingly, because plaintiff’s claimed damages are in excess of $10,000, only the Court of Claims could exercise jurisdiction over the instant case.
The majority attempts to avoid the result mandated by Woodbury and the jurisdictional section of the Tucker Act. First, it distinguishes Woodbury by pointing out that the plaintiff there suffered only economic harm, while in the instant case, the plaintiff has suffered a physical injury.1 Nothing in Woodbury, suggests such a distinction. Woodbury focused on the source of the government’s obligation to the injured party, not on the nature of the harm suffered:
[WJhere ... the action is essentially for breach of a contractual undertaking, and the liability, if any, depends wholly upon the government’s alleged promise, the action must be under the Tucker Act, and cannot be under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Second, the majority likens the instant situation to the factual setting of a Third Circuit case in which suit under the FTCA was permitted. That case, Aleutco Corp. v. United States, 244 F.2d 674 (3d Cir. 1957), was distinguished in Woodbury:
[T]he contract [in Aleutco] was not the essential basis of the claim — rather, it came into the case as a claimed defense on behalf of the government, which asserted that plaintiff, by breach of contractual arrangements with the government, had forfeited its right to the property.
Woodbury, supra, at 296-97. In the instant case, the breach of contract is the sole basis for plaintiff’s claim. Accordingly, Aleutco provides no authority for holding that suit under the FTCA was proper.
*707I would vacate the judgment of the district court and remand so that the case could be dismissed.

. The majority relies on Aleutco Corp. v. United States, 244 F.2d 674 (3d Cir. 1957), as a case analogous to the instant case in which suit under the FTCA was permitted. But Aleutco, like Woodbury, involved only financial injuries.