Trial News

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied certiorari in a case involving the wrongful death of a U.S. Navy lieutenant at a military hospital. The lower courts dismissed the action based on the Feres doctrine, which prevents members of the armed services who have suffered non-combat injuries from holding the government accountable under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). (Daniel v. United States, No. 18-460 (U.S. cert. denied May 20, 2019).)

In 2014, active duty Navy Lt. Rebekah Daniel delivered a healthy baby girl at the naval hospital in Bremerton, Wash. Four hours later, she died from postpartum hemorrhaging, and her husband, Walter, alleged that the medical staff failed to follow the standard of care, leading to her untimely death. He sued the government for negligence and wrongful death under the FTCA, but the district court dismissed the case based on Feres, which provides the government sovereign immunity from tort claims involving injuries to servicemembers that are “incident to military service.”

On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, the plaintiff argued that the “claims at issue involve medical care for a condition unrelated to military service, rendered at a domestic military hospital, indistinguishable from treatment that any civilian spouse might seek at the same facility.” But the Ninth Circuit affirmed, as Trial News previously reported.

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion opened noting that the court “regretfully reached the conclusion that [the plaintiff's] claims are barred by the Feres doctrine” and ended with a call to the Supreme Court: “If ever there were a case to carve out an exception to the Feres doctrine, this is it. But only the Supreme Court has the tools to do so.” The Supreme Court decided Feres in 1950.

In October, the plaintiff filed a cert petition, which the Supreme Court denied late last month. However, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was ready to grant cert, and Justice Clarence Thomas issued a strongly worded dissent: “Feres was wrongly decided and heartily deserves the widespread, almost universal criticism it has received . . . [the] denial of relief to military personnel and distortions of other areas of law to compensate—will continue to ripple through our jurisprudence as long as the Court refuses to reconsider Feres.” The Court also denied cert in another case involving the application of Feres (Jones v. United States, No. 18-981).

“Military health care providers have been immunized by Feres for far too long. Our servicemembers deserve better,” said American Association for Justice CEO Linda Lipsen. Calling this decision “disappointing,” she added that it “brings new urgency to the need for Congress to pass the ‘Sergeant First Class  Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act of 2019,’ a new bipartisan bill that will restore basic legal rights for all active duty servicemembers so they can seek justice if they are injured as a result of preventable medical errors.”

Introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in late April, the federal legislation would allow active duty military personnel to bring medical negligence claims against the U.S. government for injury or wrongful death that occurs at a covered military medical treatment facility. It includes a three-year statute of limitations from the date of the injury or the date that the servicemember reasonably should have discovered the injury and its cause.