Wood v. United States

Plaintiff filed suit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. 2671 et seq., alleging that Navy officers negligently allowed a training structure to remain in a dangerous condition and failed to warn her of the dangerous gap between the mats placed adjacent to the structure. Plaintiff, a sheriff's deputy, was seriously injured when she jumped from the structure onto the set of mats and landed in a gap between them. The district court granted the government’s motion to dismiss, concluding that the challenged Navy conduct fell within the FTCA’s “discretionary function exception” and therefore that Congress had not waived sovereign immunity for plaintiff's claim. The court affirmed and concluded that the Navy’s decisions regarding the maintenance of its military bases for use by civilian law enforcement involved policy judgments that Congress sought to shield from tort liability under the FTCA. View "Wood v. United States" on Justia Law