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Federal Tort Claims Act
Implemented in 1946, the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), is legally known as
28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671-2680. Its aim is to allow people to file suits against the government for any injuries they have suffered from a federal employee or an agency itself. Prior to the FTCA’s passage into law, the United States government could not be responsible for this sort of suit unless Congress authorized it expressly. This is known as the common law doctrine of sovereign immunity. “The FTCA allows the United States government to be liable for: injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the government while acting within the scope of his office or employment, under circumstances where the United States, if a private person would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred” (Cohen and Burrows, 2007).
Many in the legal community, however, find the ramifications, exemptions and relief the FTCA supplies to be quite convoluted. “ it contains numerous exceptions, exclusions and prefiling rquirements that frequently bar such claims. By and large, it provides full compensation to persons injured by commonplace negligence of government employees, but no remedy for those whose claims involve intentional torts, rest on strict liability theories, or arise from a hodge podge of other circumstances.” (Figley, 2009). Although, there has obviously been some issues with the FTCA, it has largely served its purpose because it “creates an effective administrative procedure that efficiently resolves without litigation the vast majority of tort claims against the federal government. It grants the federal courts subject matter jurisdiction to decide those claims that cannot be settled, subject to specific
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limitations set forth by Congress. In doing so it effectively transferred responsibility for deciding disputed tort claims from Congress to the courts.” (Figley, 2009).
Since shortly after the Constitution was enacted, there have been issues with the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Namely people had no form of legal remedy and Congress took an extremely long amount of time to decide if it should waive the doctrine, then it must determine itself whether there was an injury. For example, John Quincy Adams voiced concerns over the time period it took Congress to address tort claims (Figley, 2009). Millard Fillmore thought a special body should manage personal claims and Abraham Lincoln mentioned a similar resolution in his first annual address (Figley, 2009).
Over the years, Congress did attempt to find a solution for the problems with the doctrine of sovereign immunity through legislation such as the Court of Claims Act in 1855 and in 1886, there was the Tucker Act (Figley, 2009). The problem, however, is both these statutes excluded torts. Up until the 1920’s there had been other laws passed that provided a forum for specific groups such as horse owners, oyster growers and people that suffered an injury at the hands of the United States Postal Service but after reviewing more than thirty bills from the 1920’s until 1946, still did not pass any laws addressing this issue (Figley, 2009).
So how does the FTCA apply to local justice and security administrations? That is not a simple answer. Although the United States government pays out millions of dollars for such claims, because of how the claims must be filed and the nature of the FTCA itself, a suit of this nature is not easy to receive a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. Here are the main exclusions of tort suits under the FTCA, as there are too many to include in this paper:
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- Only employees of the federal government are liable and not individuals employed by the government to perform certain tasks.
- The tort action must have commenced within or resulted from the defendant’s employment duties.
- As a rule, only claims of negligence and not intentional misconduct are allowed.
- The suit must follow the rules and laws of the state where the injury or wrong occurred (Goguen, nd).
Here is an example of how the FTCA can apply to local government and what suits
of this nature entail: Two vehicle passengers injured in an accident sought to hold a rural Alaskan city vicariously liable for their injuries that were allegedly caused by a native village tribal police officer who was certified as a federal employee for purposes of the lawsuit. The officer ordered the two minors to ride on the back of a four wheeler he was driving after he found them out in violation of curfew. They were thrown off the vehicle when he lost control of the vehicle. The vicarious liability claim was based on the theory that the city had a non-delegable duty to provide law enforcement services to the community. The officer, a federal appeals court found, was entitled to immunity from liability under both his tribe's sovereign immunity and under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The injured plaintiffs' sole remedy was against the federal government and the immunities available to the officer extended to the city. M.J. v. United States, #11-35625, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 13416 (9th Cir.) (Aele Law Library, nd).
There are many areas of when liability when it comes the both state and federal tort law for community supervision personnel and custodial staff. Although there is more contact between say an officer and a person that is an inmate a county jail or state penitentiary,
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therefore resulting primarily the use of force, community supervision employees are responsible for keeping vast amounts of personal data private and organized. In addition, they are endowed with quite a bit of freedom with how they handle their caseloads or interact with their clients. The result is more physical torts for custodial staff and more nonphysical torts for community supervision employees.
Actual torts these employees could be held liable for would be defamation, invasion of privacy, misrepresentation of facts, malicious prosecution, wrongful death and inappropriate use of force. Naturally there are many other tort actions where crime, justice and security agencies would run a large risk of liability and these are only a small sampling. As a result of this extensive risk, however, that is probably what Congress had in mind with the exclusions and limitations in the FTCA. Since the scope of civil liabilities for these types of actions is so exhaustive, there has to be limits on what is considered to be legally applicable and what can be determined as inappropriate. The restrictions are not to actually disallow people to bring these types of suits, but merely to lessen what can be brought into a suit under the FTCA. Ultimately, these kinds of tort law suits have to a local crime, security or justice agencies’ major concerns. It would be quite simple to have a various amount of actions brought against say a probation or parole officer, a social worker or even an employee at a county jail. Therefore, the FTCA, while often unwieldy and filled with contradictions, is not exactly the streamlined document many politicians have pushed for since the United States first came into existence, it most certainly serves its purpose. It also acts a balancer, so to speak, by not overwhelming administration agents and court systems with cases that might possess substantial legal substance. The criticism of the FTCA is understandable, but if definitely fulfills the functional goals it was established with.
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References
Aele Law Library. (n.d.). Federal Law Library of Case Studies. Web. Retrieved
Burrows, Vanessa and Henry Cohen. (2007). Federal Tort Claims Act. CRS Report for
Congress. Web. Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-717.pdf on May 29.
Figley, Paul. (2009). Understanding the Federal Tort Claims Act: A Different Metaphor. Tort
Trial and Insurance Practice Law Journal. Volume 44:3/44:4 Spring/Summer edition.
Goguen, David. (n.d). Sueing the Government for Negligence: The Federal Tort Claims Act.
Nolo.com. Web. Retrieved
