United States v. Johnson (1987)

Last updated
United States v. Johnson
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued February 24, 1987
Decided May 18, 1987
Full case nameUnited States v. Johnson, Personal Representative of the Estate of Johnson
Citations 481 U.S. 681 ( more )
107 S. Ct. 2063; 95 L. Ed. 2d 648; 1987 U.S. LEXIS 2055; 55 U.S.L.W. 4647
Prior historyJohnson v. United States, 749 F.2d 1530 (11th Cir. 1985), affirmed on rehearing, 779 F.2d 1492 (11th Cir. 1986)
Holding
The Feres doctrine bars an FTCA action on behalf of a service member killed during an activity incident to service, even if the alleged negligence is by civilian employees of the Federal Government.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr.  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall  · Harry Blackmun
Lewis F. Powell Jr.  · John P. Stevens
Sandra Day O'Connor  · Antonin Scalia
Case opinions
Majority Powell, joined by Rehnquist, White, Blackmun, O'Connor
Dissent Scalia, joined by Brennan, Marshall, Stevens
Laws applied
Federal Tort Claims Act

United States v. Johnson, 481 U.S. 681 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court barred the widow of a serviceman killed while piloting a helicopter on a United States Coast Guard rescue mission from bringing her claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act (the "FTCA" or the "Act"). [1] The decision was based upon the Supreme Court's holding in Feres v. United States (1950): "[T]he Government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to servicemen where the injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service."

Supreme Court of the United States Highest court in the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, including suits between two or more states and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide nonjusticiable political questions. Each year it agrees to hear about one hundred to one hundred fifty of the more than seven thousand cases that it is asked to review.

United States Coast Guard Coastal defense and law enforcement branch of the United States Armed Forces

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the coastal defense and maritime law enforcement branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's seven uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the U.S. military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission as part of its mission set. It operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during peacetime, and can be transferred to the U.S. Department of the Navy by the U.S. President at any time, or by the U.S. Congress during times of war. This has happened twice: in 1917, during World War I, and in 1941, during World War II.

The Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA") is a 1946 federal statute that permits private parties to sue the United States in a federal court for most torts committed by persons acting on behalf of the United States. Historically, citizens have not been able to sue their state—a doctrine referred to as sovereign immunity. The FTCA constitutes a limited waiver of sovereign immunity, permitting citizens to pursue some tort claims against the government.

Contents

Background

Lieutenant Commander Johnson, a Coast Guard helicopter pilot stationed in Hawaii, was dispatched along with his crew, to search for a vessel in distress. Because of inclement weather and poor visibility, Johnson "requested radar assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"), . . . the FAA controllers assumed positive radar control over the helicopter. Shortly thereafter, the helicopter crashed into the side of a mountain and . . . all the crew members, including Johnson, were killed in the crash."

Hawaii State of the United States of America

Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States, having received statehood on August 21, 1959. Hawaii is the only U.S. state located in Oceania, the only U.S. state located outside North America, and the only one composed entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean.

Johnson's widow and personal representative of his estate brought a wrongful death action against the government pursuant to the FTCA. Plaintiff alleged that Johnson's death was due to the negligence of the FAA flight controllers. The government filed a motion to dismiss, claiming that the plaintiff was barred from recovering damages from the federal government, because Johnson died while performing his military duties.

The district court granted the motion, based solely on the Supreme Court's decision in Feres. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed, noting that the action did not involve military service. [2] The court determined that since the alleged tortfeasors were civilian employees of the government, rather than military employees, judicial second-guessing of the civilian's conduct would not adversely affect military discipline.

The Eleventh Circuit's original opinion antedated the Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Shearer (1985). The Eleventh Circuit therefore granted the government's petition for rehearing en banc to reconsider Johnson's case in light of the Supreme Court's upcoming decision in Shearer; by the time consideration had occurred, Shearer had been decided. In a per curiam opinion on rehearing, a majority of the Eleventh Circuit concluded that Shearer "reinforced the analysis set forth in the panel opinion."

Majority Opinion

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Powell, reversed, holding that the cause of action was barred by Feres. The opinion indicates that Stencel required the reversal. [3] The Court's opinion then restated the three rationales offered in Stencel: [4]

Lewis F. Powell Jr. American judge

Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from 1971 to 1987. Powell compiled a conservative record on the Court and cultivated a reputation as a swing vote with a penchant for compromise.

1. the distinctively federal relationship between soldier and government would make the application of state law inappropriate;
2. the VBA was intended to be the exclusive remedy for injuries incident to military service; and
3. judicial second-guessing of military acts and decisions would have an adverse effect on military discipline.

The Court then found each of the three Stencel reasons for the Feres bar applicable to Johnson. Since decedent's death-producing injuries had been incident to his military service, the first reason applied. Because his widow had applied for and received compensation for her husband's death pursuant to the Veterans' Benefits Act, the second reason applied. As for the third reason, the Court wrote:

Even if military negligence is not specifically alleged in a tort action, a suit based upon service-related activity necessarily implicates the military judgments and decisions that are inextricably intertwined with the conduct of the military mission. Moreover, military discipline involves not only obedience to orders, but more generally duty and loyalty to one's service and to one's country. Suits brought by service members against the Government for service-related injuries could undermine the commitment essential to effective service and thus have the potential to disrupt military discipline in the broadest sense of the word.

Dissent

Justice Scalia, with three Justices joining, filed a dissenting opinion. He concluded that Feres had been "wrongly decided," but noted that since "[w]e have not been asked by the plaintiff to overrule Feres, we need not resolve whether considerations of stare decisis should induce us, despite the plain error of the case, to leave bad enough alone."

Antonin Scalia American judge

Antonin Gregory Scalia was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Court's conservative wing.

Rather, Justice Scalia would have declined to apply Feres to a case in which the allegedly negligent actors were civilian employees of the government. He conceded that the limitation it sought was more a product of pragmatism than logical symmetry: "We confess that the line between FTCA suits alleging military negligence and those alleging civilian negligence has nothing to recommend it except that it would limit our clearly wrong decision in Feres and confine the unfairness and irrationality that decision has bred. But that, we think, is justification enough." As the dissent noted, the Court itself had disavowed the reasons originally offered in Feres and substituted as the only rationale (until Johnson resurrected the other two) the after-discovered military discipline concern. Justice Scalia concluded that none of the reasons that the Court has asserted, from Feres through Shearer, persuasively supported the Feres bar.

He further disagreed with the majority opinion in that it did not regard the Congressional failure to amend the FTCA in the years since Feres as bespeaking to congressional acquiescence in the Court's interpretation of the Act:

We cannot take comfort, as the Court does from Congress' failure to amend the FTCA to overturn Feres. The unlegislated desires of later Congresses with regard to one thread in the fabric of the FTCA could hardly have any bearing upon the proper interpretation of the entire fabric of compromises that their predecessors enacted into law in 1946. And even if they could, intuiting those desires from congressional failure to act is an uncertain enterprise which takes as its starting point disregard of the checks and balances in the constitutional scheme of legislation designed to assure that not all desires of a majority of the Legislature find their way into law.

Related Research Articles

The Alien Tort Statute, also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section of the United States Code that reads: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Since 1980, courts have interpreted this statute to allow foreign citizens to seek remedies in U.S. courts for human-rights violations for conduct committed outside the United States.

Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that U.S. citizen civilians outside of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States cannot be tried by U.S. military tribunal, but instead retain the protections guaranteed by the United States Constitution, in this case, trial by jury. Additionally, a plurality of the Court also reaffirmed the president’s ability to enter into international executive agreements, though it held that such agreements cannot contradict federal law or the Constitution.

United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), is a landmark legal case in 1953 that saw the formal recognition of the State Secrets Privilege, a judicially recognized extension of presidential power.

Dolan v. United States Postal Service, 546 U.S. 481 (2006), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, involving the extent to which the United States Postal Service has sovereign immunity from lawsuits brought by private individuals under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The Court ruled that an exception to the FTCA that barred liability for the "negligent transmission of mail" did not apply to a claim for injuries caused when someone tripped over mail left by a USPS employee. Instead, the exception only applied to damage caused to the mail itself or that resulted from its loss or delay.

Milan Smith American judge

Milan Dale Smith Jr. is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Smith's brother, Gordon Smith, was a Republican United States Senator from Oregon from 1996 to 2009.

Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250 (2006), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the pleading standard for retaliatory prosecution claims against government officials. Following a successful lobbying attempt by the CEO of a manufacturing company against competing devices that the United States Postal Service supported, the CEO found himself the target of an investigation by U.S. postal inspectors and a criminal prosecution, which was dismissed for lack of evidence. The CEO then filed suit against the inspectors and other government officials for seeking to prosecute him in retaliation for exercising his First Amendment rights to criticize postal policy. The Court ruled, 5-2, that in order to prove that the prosecution was caused by a retaliatory motive, the plaintiff bringing such a claim must allege and prove that the criminal charges were brought without probable cause.

Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950), combined three pending federal cases for a hearing in certiorari in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the United States is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to members of the armed forces sustained while on active duty and not on furlough and resulting from the negligence of others in the armed forces. The opinion is an extension of the English common-law concept of sovereign immunity.

United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a serviceman could not file a tort action against the federal government even though the government secretly administered doses of LSD to him as part of an experimental program, because his injuries were found by the lower court to be service-related.

Bowoto v. Chevron Corp. was a lawsuit against Chevron Nigeria Ltd., a subsidiary of Chevron USA, which went to trial in 2008 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs, Nigerian citizens who had been injured during or who had survived human rights violations perpetrated by Nigerian military personnel, alleged that the Chevron subsidiary backed the military action and that the parent company thus should bear liability in US courts for the resultant fallout. The suit was decided on December 1, 2008, when nine jurors unanimously agreed Chevron was not liable for any of the numerous allegations. Judgment was entered the next day, officially exonerating Chevron.

Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Alien Tort Statute and the Federal Tort Claims Act.

<i>Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp.</i>

Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., No. 4:08-cv-01138, is a lawsuit filed on February 26, 2008, in a United States district court. The suit, based on the common law theory of nuisance, claims monetary damages from the energy industry for the destruction of Kivalina, Alaska by flooding caused by climate change. The damage estimates made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Government Accountability Office are placed between $95 million and $400 million. This lawsuit is an example of greenhouse gas emission liability.

<i>Doe v. MySpace Inc.</i>

Doe v. MySpace, 528 F.3d 413, is a 2008 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that affirmed a lower court decision finding that MySpace was immune under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 from liability resulting from a sexual assault of a minor.

United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537 (1982), was a United States Supreme Court case.

<i>Doe v. Unocal Corp.</i>

Doe v. Unocal, 395 F.3d 932, opinion vacated and rehearing en banc granted, 395 F.3d 978, was a lawsuit filed against Unocal for alleged human rights violations.

Legal Services Corp. v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533 (2001), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the constitutionality of funding restrictions imposed by the United States Congress. At issue were restrictions on the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), a private, non-profit corporation established by Congress. The restrictions prohibited LSC attorneys from representing clients attempting to amend existing welfare law. The case was brought by Carmen Velazquez, whose LSC-funded attorneys sought to challenge existing welfare provisions, believing it was the only way to get Velazquez financial relief.

Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case. The case was an appeal from the Ninth Circuit's decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in which the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, reversed the district court's decision to certify a class action lawsuit in which the plaintiff class included 1.6 million women who currently work or have worked for Walmart stores, including the lead plaintiff, Betty Dukes. Dukes, a current Walmart employee, and others alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotion policies and practices in Walmart stores.

Sheridan v. United States, 487 U.S. 392 (1988), was a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning what constitutes a claim "arising out of" an assault or battery within the meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The Supreme Court held that the FTCA's intentional tort exception did not apply.

<i>Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services</i>

Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services was a lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation as a constitutional challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The plaintiffs claimed that the ACA's enactment violated the Origination Clause of the Constitution. The suit was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the dismissal was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The plaintiffs sought review by the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear an appeal.

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), is a United States labor law case that came before the Supreme Court of the United States. At issue in the case was whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education should be overruled, with public-sector "agency shop" arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment, and whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring employees to consent affirmatively to subsidizing such speech. Specifically, the case concerned public sector collective bargaining by the California Teachers Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association.

References

  1. ↑ United States v. Johnson, 481 U.S. 681 (1987).
  2. ↑ Johnson v. United States, 749 F.2d 1530, 1539 (11th Cir. 1985), affirmed on rehearing, 779 F.2d 1492 (11th Cir. 1986), rev'd, 481 U.S. 681 (1987). The court noted that:
    The complaint in this case alleges that plaintiff's decedent was killed because civilian FAA air traffic controllers negligently guided the helicopter he was piloting into a mountain. There is absolutely no hint in the scant record before this court that the conduct of any alleged tortfeasor even remotely connected to the military will be scrutinized if this case proceeds to trial. Nor is there a suggestion that examining the conduct of a civilian would in any way implicate the military services. Since the prosecution of plaintiff's claim cannot conceivably involve or compromise a military relationship or, for that matter, the military discipline structure, the prosecution of plaintiff's claim will not encroach upon the rationale which "serves largely if not exclusively as the predicate for the Feres doctrine."
    Johnson, 749 F.2d at 1539 (footnote omitted) (quoting in part Hunt v. United States, 636 F.2d 580, 599 (D.C. Cir. 1980)).
  3. ↑ Id. at 688-89. The Court stated that, "[t]his Court has emphasized three broad rationales underlying the Feres decision. See Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States . . . ." Id.
  4. ↑ Although Shearer stated that the first two reasons were "no longer controlling," the Court cited Shearer in support of the third reason, and simply ignored that portion of Shearer that seemed to negate the first two reasons.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.