United States v. Gilman

• Decision Date: 17 May 1954
• Docket Number: No. 449,449
• Citation: 98 L.Ed. 898,1954 A.M.C. 1083,347 U.S. 507,74 S.Ct. 695
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. GILMAN
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

347 U.S. 507

74 S.Ct. 695

98 L.Ed. 898

UNITED STATES

v GILMAN.

No. 449.

Argued March 10, 11, 1954.

Decided May 17, 1954.

Mr.

Paul A. Sweeney, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. William C. Wetherbee, Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The single question in the case is whether the United States may recover indemnity from one of its employees after it has been held liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act,¹ 60 Stat. 842, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346, 2671 et seq., 28 U.S.C.A. §§ 1346, 2671 et seq., for the negligence of the employee.

Respondent, an employee of the United States, had a collision with the car of one Darnell, while respondent was driving a government automobile. Darnell sued the United States under the Tort Claims Act. The United States filed a third-party complaint against respondent, asking that if it should be held liable to Darnell, it have indemnity from respondent. The District Court found that Darnell's injuries were caused solely by the negligence of respondent, acting within the scope of his employment. It entered judgment against the United States for $5,500 and judgment over for the United States in the same amount. The Court of Appeals reversed the judgment against respondent by a divided vote. 206 F.2d 846. The case is here on writ of certiorari. 346 U.S. 914, 74 S.Ct. 275.

Petitioner's argument is that the right of indemnity, though not expressly granted by the Tort Claims Act, is to be implied. A private employer, it is said, has a common-law right of indemnity against an employee whose negligence has made the employer liable. The Tort Claims Act, by imposing liability on the United States for the negligent acts of its employees, has placed it in the general position of a private employer. Therefore, it should have the comparable right of indemnity against the negligent employee which private employers have. United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 340 U.S. 543, 71 S.Ct. 399, 95 L.Ed. 523, is said to show the way. For there we held that the United States could be sued as a third-party defendant for contributions claimed by a joint tort-feasor, though no specific provision of the Tort Claims Act provided for such suits.

In that case, however, we were dealing with an established type of liability, which was within the broad sweep of the claims for which the United States had agreed to stand liable. Since the claim was within the class covered by the waiver of sovereign immunity, the Court refused to restrict its enforcement to separate actions for contribution.

The present case is quite different. We deal not with the liability of the United States, but with the liability of its employees. The Tort Claims Act does not touch the liability of the employees except in one respect: by 28 U.S.C. § 2676, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2676, it makes the judgment against the United States 'a complete bar' to any action by the claimant against the employee. And see § 2672.

The relations between the United States and its employees have presented a myriad of problems with which the Congress over the years has dealt. Tenure, retirement, discharge, veterans' preferences, the responsibility of the United States to some employees for negligent acts of other employees—these are a few of the aspects of the problem on which Congress has legislative. Government employment gives rise to policy questions of great import, both to the employees and to the Executive and Legislative Branches. On the employee side are questions of considerable import. Discipline of the employee, the exactions which may be made of him, the merits or demerits he may suffer, the rate of his promotion are of great consequence to those who make government service their career. The right of the employer to sue the employee is a form of discipline. Perhaps the suits which would be instituted under the rule which petitioner asks would mostly be brought only when the employee carried insurance. But the decision we could fashion could have no such limitations, since we deal only with a rule of indemnity which is utterly independent of any underwriting of the liability. Moreover, the suits that would be brought would haul the employee to court and require him to find a lawyer, to face his employer's charge, and to submit to the ordeal of a trial. The time out for the trial and its preparation, plus the out-of-pocket expenses, might well impose on the employee a heavier financial burden than the loss of his seniority or a demotion in rank. When the United States sues an employee and takes him to court, it lays the heavy hand of discipline on him, as onerous to the employee perhaps as any measure the employer might take, except discharge itself.

On the government side are questions of employee morale and fiscal policy. We have no way of knowing what the impact of the rule of indemnity we are asked to create might be. But we do know the question has serious aspects—considerations that pertain to the financial ability of employees, to their efficiency, to their morale. These are all important to the Executive Branch. The financial burden placed on the United States by the Tort Claims Act also raises important questions of fiscal policy. A part of that fiscal problem is the question of reimbursement of the United States for the losses it suffers as a result of the waiver of its sovereign immunity. Perhaps the losses suffered are so great that government employees should be required to carry part of the burden. Perhaps the cost in the morale and efficiency of employees would be too high a price to pay for the rule of indemnity the petitioner now asks us to write into the Tort Claims Act.

We had an analogous problem before us in United States v. Standard Oil Co., 332 U.S. 301, 67 S.Ct. 1604, 91 L.Ed. 2067, where the United States sued the owner and driver of a truck for the negligent injury of a soldier in the Army of the United States, claiming damages for loss of the soldier's service during the period of his disability. We were asked to extend the common-law action of per quod servitium amisit to the government-soldier relation. We declined stating that the problem involved federal fiscal affairs over which Congress, not the Court, should formulate the policy.

The reasons for following that course in the present case are even more compelling. Here a complex of relations between federal agencies and their staffs is involved. Moreover, the claim now asserted, though the product of a law Congress passed, is a matter on which Congress has not taken a position. It presents questions of policy on which Congress has not spoken.² The selection of that policy which is most advantageous to the whole involves a host of considerations that must be weighed and appraised. That function is more appropriately for those who write the laws, rather than for those who interpret them.

Affirmed.

1 The Act provides in pertinent part as follows:

Sec. 1346. (b) 'Subject to the provisions of chapter 171 of this title, the district courts, together with the District Court for the Territory of Alaska, the United States District Court for the District of the Canal Zone and the District Court of the...