Court Opinion

ID: 9430695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:21.632726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:25.833135
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Marshall and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting.
As a part of the major undertaking authorized by the Mississippi Flood Control Act of 1928, Congress directed the Secretary of War and the Chief of Engineers to take special *613steps to acquire lands that were subject to “overflow and damage” along the banks of the Mississippi River where it was impracticable to construct levees. In the section of the Act containing that specific direction concerning the acquisition of “lands so subjected to overflow and damage,” there is a sentence stating that “[n]o liability of any kind shall attach to or rest upon the United States for any damage from or by floods or flood waters at any place.”1
According to the Court, Congress intended by this sentence to immunize the Federal Government from liability for any claim for personal injury, even though Congress provided expressly for compensation for property damage in excess of *614that required by the Constitution.2 In my view, neither the plain language of thé statute nor the legislative history behind it supports imputing such a perverse design to the Legislature. In my opinion, this provision applies only to property damage, and the judgment below should be affirmed.3
The immunity provision absolves the United States of liability for any “damage” by floods or floodwaters. The word “damage” traditionally describes a harm to property (hence, “property damage”), rather than harm to the person (usually referred to as “personal injury”). As Chief Judge Cockburn explained in Smith v. Brown, 40 L. J. Rep. (n.s.) 214, 218 (Q. B. 1871): *615See Seward v. The Owners of the Vera Cruz, 54 L. J. Rep. 9, 13 (P. D. & A. 1884) (Lord Chancellor); Simpson v. Blues, 41 L. J. Rep. (n.s.) 121, 128 (C. P. 1872). This understanding of “damage” was not peculiar to English common-law courts, but was the preferred definition found in legal dictionaries and in legal encyclopedias in use in the United States around the time Congress drafted the Mississippi Flood Control Act. See, e. g., Bouvier’s Law Dictionary 749 (8th ed. 1914); 15 Am. Jur., Damages § 2, p. 388 (1938) (“A distinction is to be noted between the word ‘damage’ and ‘damages.’ ‘Damage’ is defined to be the loss, injury, or deterioration caused by negligence, design, or accident of one person to another in respect of the latter’s personal property, whereas ‘damages’ signifies compensation in money for the loss or damage” (emphasis added)); 17 C. J., Damage 698 (1919) (“It has been held that neither in common parlance nor in legal phraseology is the word [‘damage’] used as applicable to injuries done to the person, but solely as applicable to mischief done to property; and, although we speak of damages as compensation for injury done to the person, yet the term is not employed interchangeably with the term ‘injury,’ with reference to mischief wrongfully occasioned to the person; but there is authority to the effect that the term ‘damage’ includes personal injuries; and where the context shows that damage means personal injury, the term will be so construed” (footnotes omitted)).
*614“The question is whether a personal injury occasioned by the collision of two vessels comes under the term ‘damage’ as used in the 7th section. Now the words used are undoubtedly very extensive, but it is to be observed that neither in common parlance nor in legal phraseology is the word ‘damage’ used as applicable to injuries done to the person, but solely as applicable to mischief done to property. Still less is this term applicable to loss of life or injury resulting therefrom, to a widow or surviving relative. We speak indeed of ‘damages’ as compensation for injury done to the person, but the term ‘damages’ is not employed interchangeably with the term ‘injury,’ with reference to mischief wrongfully occasioned to the person. . . . [T]his distinction is not a matter of mere verbal criticism, but is of a substantial character and necessary to be attended to . . . .”
*615Because the preferred definition of “damage” in 1928 excluded harm to the person, one would think that the Court— in accordance with the “plain meaning” of §3 — would construe the immunity provision to bar liability only for property damage. Surprisingly, the Court reaches precisely the opposite conclusion. Its analysis, however, relies entirely on authorities which define “damages” — or the monetary remedy imposed on one found liable for a legal wrong — rather than “damage” — which is the term Congress employed to identify the liability from which the Federal Government was thereafter excused. It is therefore quite beside the point *616that “damages” have “‘historically been awarded both for injury to property and injury to the person.’” Ante, at 605 (quoting American Stevedores, Inc. v. Porello, 330 U. S. 446, 450 (1947)), for the statute bars liability for “damage,” not “damages.” Indeed, the Court’s own authorities, see ante, at 605, and n. 6, distinguish between the two terms:
“It might be noted here that there is a distinction between damage and damages. Black’s Law Dictionary cautions that the word ‘damage,’ meaning ‘Loss, injury, or deterioration,’ is ‘to be distinguished from its plural, — "damages,” — which means a compensation in money for a loss or damage.’” American Stevedores, Inc. v. Porello, 330 U. S., at 450, n. 6.4
The Court thus provides no basis for thinking that Congress used “damage” other than in its common, preferred usage to mean property damage. If “plain meaning” is our polestar, the immunity provision does not bar respondents’ personal injury suits.
The remainder of the statute and its legislative history similarly provide no basis for assuming that Congress used “damage” to bar liability for personal injuries. The text of §3 — indeed, the text of the entire Mississippi Flood Control Act of 1928 — contains no reference to personal injury. Moreover, when the sentence beginning “[n]o liability” is read together with the proviso appended to it, it is most *617readily understood as relating to the kind of harm that the paragraph as a whole describes — namely, the harm to “land subjected to overflow and damage.” As the text of § 3 of the Act plainly states, see n. 1, supra, the Federal Government assumed certain responsibilities for areas in which the construction of levees was not practicable. Given that specific and limited undertaking, the sentence limiting liability is best understood as making it clear that the Federal Government accepted no additional responsibilities and did not intend to create a new federal judicial remedy for failing to carry out its undertaking. Indeed, a claim that the 1928 Act created a new federal remedy for property damage was advanced and rejected in United States v. Sponenbarger, 308 U. S. 256, 269-270 (1939). Thus, the text of § 3 read as a whole irresistibly implies that the sentence in question was intended merely to place a limit on the potential liability of the United States that might otherwise have arisen from the direction to the Secretary of the War and the Chief of Engineers concerning overflow damage to land.5
*618The legislative history of the statute is entirely consistent with this reading. It was a response, not only to the disastrous flood of 1927, but to the perennial threat to landowners in the alluvial valley of the Mississippi River posed by recurrent floods since at least 1717. See United States v. Sponenbarger, 308 U. S., at 260-262. During the lengthy hearings and debates on the 1928 legislation, there was extensive discussion of the allocation of the cost of property damage, both past and future, among private interests, local governmental entities, and the Federal Government. See ante, at 607, n. 8 (quoting estimates of the costs of construction and acquisition of property). But there was no discussion that I have been able to find concerning potential liability for personal injuries. If Congress meant to include personal injury “damage” in the immunity conferred by § 3, one would expect to find some explanation of why it authorized extraconstitu-tional compensation for property damage but nothing for personal injury. The expected explanation is nowhere to be found.
Construing the immunity sentence as a limit on the compensation authorized in §3 also avoids rendering that sentence superfluous. The 70th Congress had no reason to enact a special statute to protect the Federal Government from tort liability for personal injuries for the simple reason that another decade and a half was to pass before Congress enacted the Federal Tort Claims Act in 19466 and “put aside its sovereign armor in cases where federal employees have *619tortiously caused personal injury or property damage.”7 It is quite unrealistic to assume that in 1928 Congress enacted a special provision to avoid a liability from which it was already immune.8
It would be regrettable but obligatory for this Court to construe the immunity provision to bar personal injury claims if such was the intent of Congress. But when a critical term in the statute suggests a more limited construction, and when the congressional debates are not only consistent with this construction, but nowhere reveal a recognition, let alone an intention, that the immunity provision would deprive *620those injured by governmental negligence of any remedy, a narrower interpretation is more faithful to the objective of Congress. It defies belief — and ascribes to the Members of Congress a perverse, even barbaric, intent — to think that they spent days debating the measure of extraconstitutional compensation they would provide riparian landowners but intended — without a single word of dissent — to condemn the widows, orphans, and injured victims of negligent operation of flood control projects to an irrational exclusion from the protection of the subsequently enacted Tort Claims Act.
I respectfully dissent.

 Section 3 of the statute, which is now codified as 33 U. S. C. § 702c, reads in full as follows:
“See. 3. Except when authorized by the Secretary of War upon the recommendation of the Chief of Engineers, no money appropriated under authority of this Act shall be expended on the construction of any item of the project until the States or levee districts have given assurances satisfactory to the Secretary of War that they will (a) maintain all flood-control works after their completion, except controlling and regulating spillway structures, including special relief levees; maintenance includes normally such matters as cutting grass, removal of weeds, local drainage, and minor repairs of main river levees; (b) agree to accept land turned over to them under the provisions of section 4; (e) provide without cost to the United States, all rights of way for levee foundations and levees on the main stem of the Mississippi River between Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and the Head of Passes.
“No liability of any kind shall attach to or rest upon the United States for any damage from or by floods or flood waters at any place: Provided, however, That if in carrying out the purposes of this Act it shall be found that upon any stretch of the banks of the Mississippi River it is impracticable to construct levees, either because such construction is not economically justified or because such construction would unreasonably restrict the flood channel, and lands in such stretch of the river are subjected to overflow and damage which are not now overflowed or damaged by reason of the construction of levees on the opposite banks of the river it shall be the duty of the Secretary of War and the Chief of Engineers to institute proceedings on behalf of the United States Government to acquire either the absolute ownership of the lands so subjected to overflow and damage or floodage rights over such lands.” 45 Stat. 535-536.

 Congress rejected an amendment to §3 to provide only such compensation as would be required by the Constitution — a measure that Congress thought excluded flowage rights. See 69 Cong. Ree. 7104-7111, 7122 (1928).

 My reading of the statute and its legislative history also persuades me that the immunity provision has no application to any other flood control project.

 The treatises on damages on which the Court relies likewise subscribe to this definition of “damages,” see 1 T. Sedgwick, Measure of Damages §29 (9th ed. 1912); 1 J. Sutherland, Law of Damages § 2, p. 4 (4th ed. 1916); id., § 12, at 46, and the distinction between “damage” and “damages” appears to have been universally observed, see, e. g., 15 Am. Jur., Damages § 2, p. 388 (1938); 8 American and English Encyclopaedia of Law 535 (2d ed. 1898); W. Hale, Law of Damages 9, 12-13 (2d ed. 1912). In fact, the authorities cited by the Court support the traditional interpretation of “damage”; for example, in the index to his treatise Mr. Sedgwick refers to “damage” only when referring to property damage. See 4 Sedgwick, supra, at 3160-3162.

 The Court, see ante, at 609, is simply wrong in intimating that the . immunity sentence and its proviso were dissociated from each other during their consideration before Congress. The Court’s observation that the immunity provision and the proviso were sponsored by different Congressmen is only trivially true: the proviso was offered by Representative Garrett of Tennessee as an amendment to the immunity provision, which was itself a pending amendment, sponsored by Representative Reid of Illinois, to the bill before the House of Representatives. 69 Cong. Rec. 7022 (1928). The sponsor of the proviso, Representative Garrett, offered his amendment as an amendment to the immunity provision before it was added to the bill. Ibid. In explaining the reason for this, Representative Garrett underscored the symbiotic relationship between the immunity provision and the proviso:
“Mr. Chairman, I am inclined to agree with the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. MADDEN] that the amendment which the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. REID] has proposed more properly would come in another section, but if it is to come now it seems to me that my amendment will have to *618come in connection with it at this place. I do not want to lose any rights in connection with it.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
A short while later, the House passed Representative Garrett’s amendment adding.the proviso to the amendment containing the immunity provision. Id., at 7023. Immediately thereafter, the House agreed to “the amendment of the gentleman from Illinois as amended by the amendment of the gentleman from Tennessee.” Ibid, (remarks of the Chairman) (emphasis added). The immunity provision and the proviso were thus considered and passed as a package.

 60 Stat. 842-847.

 American Stevedores, Inc. v. Porello, 330 U. S. 446, 453 (1947). It is interesting to note that in the Tort Claims Act itself, Congress repeatedly-referred in the alternative to claims “on account of damage to or loss of property or on account of personal injury or death,” see 60 Stat. 843, 845-846.
Revealingly, the Committee Reports on the Act did not understand there to be any bar to liability for personal injuries resulting from flood control projects:
“ ‘This is a highly important exception, intended to preclude any possibility that the bill might be construed to authorize suit for damages against the Government growing out of an authorized activity, such as a flood control or irrigation project, where no negligence on the part of any Government agent is shown.’” Dalehite v. United States, 346 U. S. 15, 29, n. 21 (1953) (emphasis added) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 2245, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., 10 (1942); S. Rep. No. 1196, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., 7 (1942); H. R. Rep. No. 1287, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 5-6 (1945)).

 This construction is also consistent with 58 years of decisional law. The statute the Court construes today has been on the books for more than half a century, but prior to this case there appears to be no reported decision in which the Government successfully asserted it as a defense to a personal injury claim. See 760 F. 2d 590, 599, n. 16 (CA5 1985). It has been repeatedly and successfully invoked in property damage litigation, but the application of the statute that the Court upholds today is completely unprecedented. Given the number and the size of federal flood control projects throughout our great Nation, and given the fact that the kind of recreational use disclosed by this record is fairly common, it is telling that, until today’s decision, immunity had never been upheld in defense to such a claim.