Willett v. United States
| Decision Date | 27 June 2013 |
| Docket Number | CASE NO. 2:12-CV-296-WKW [WO] |
| Parties | CHARLIE MAE WILLETT, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Alabama |
Plaintiff Charlie Mae Willett brings this Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA") action. In it, she alleges that the United States's negligence caused the injuries she sustained when a hospital employee sexual assaulted her while she was a patient at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System ("CAVHCS") facility in Montgomery, Alabama.
In January 2013, the court dismissed the First Amended Complaint on the United States's motion and granted Ms. Willett leave to amend a second time. (Doc. # 22.) Ms. Willett accepted that invitation, and the United States moved to dismiss Ms. Willett's Second Amended Complaint (Doc. # 23) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction based upon sovereign immunity. (Doc. # 27.) The parties have fully briefed the motion. (Docs. # 28, 32, 35.) After careful consideration of thearguments of counsel and the relevant law, the motion is due to be denied with leave to refile after limited jurisdictional discovery.
The parties do not contest personal jurisdiction or venue. Subject matter jurisdiction is at issue, as set out below.
A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1) may assert either a factual attack or a facial attack to jurisdiction. McElmurray v. Consol. Gov't of Augusta-Richmond Cnty., 501 F.3d 1244, 1251 (11th Cir. 2007). The United States frames its motion as a facial attack, and thus asks the court to examine whether the complaint "sufficiently allege[s] a basis of subject matter jurisdiction." Id. Practically, however, Defendant's motion factually attacks subject matter jurisdiction, as it asks the court to consider the pleadings and matters outside them. See Hogan v. U.S. Postmaster Gen., 492 F. App'x 33, 34 (11th Cir. 2012) (); Rodriguez v. United States, 415 F. App'x 143, 145 (11th Cir. 2011) ().
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion tests the sufficiency of the complaint against the legal standard articulated by Rule 8: "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). To survive a motion to dismiss brought under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint must contain sufficient factual allegations, "accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). The standard requires the plaintiff to plead "enough fact to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence" of the plaintiff's claim. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556.
The factual background is laid out in the court's earlier order on the United States's first motion to dismiss. (Doc. # 22.) Ms. Willett alleges that while she was an inpatient at CAVHCS, CAVHCS employee Marvin Chappell sexually assaulted her while she was "heavily medicated." (Doc. # 23 ¶ 12.) She alleges Chappell "sexually molested" other patients, before and after her assault, and that CAVHCS administrators were or should have been aware of those assaults. (Doc. # 23 ¶ 9.)
Ms. Willett's FTCA action alleges that the United States is liable because her hospitalization and sedation created a special relationship between her and the CAVHCS, from which a duty of care flowed. In Ms. Willett's words, this specialrelationship "[gave] rise to a duty to protect [her] from the criminal acts of third parties" while she was in CAVHCS's care. (Doc. # 23, ¶ 17.) Specifically, she alleges that the United States "negligently failed to protect her" from a foreseeable sexual assault. (Doc. # 23, ¶ 18.)
Absent a waiver, sovereign immunity poses a jurisdictional bar to suit against the United States. JBP Acquisitions, LP v. U.S. ex rel. F.D.I.C., 224 F.3d 1260, 1263, (11th Cir. 2000). Under the FTCA, the United States has waived its sovereign immunity for injuries caused by the "negligent or wrongful act or omission" of a federal government employee while that employee is "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." 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b).1 Several exceptions in 28 U.S.C. § 2680 limit this waiver, however, and where the limitations apply, sovereign immunity remains a jurisdictional bar to suit.
The United States asserts that the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over Ms. Willett's negligent hiring and supervision claims based upon two exceptions:(1) the FTCA's assault and battery exception, see § 2680(h), and (2) the FTCA's discretionary function exception, see § 2680(a). The court will address each in turn.
The FTCA stands as an exception to the general rule of sovereign immunity. The assault and battery exception is an exception to that exception; it preserves the United States's immunity from claims "arising out of" intentional torts, like battery. 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h). Ms. Willett relies on Sheridan v. United States, 487 U.S. 392 (1988), to argue that her claims arise not from her assailant's intentional acts, but from the United States's failure to exercise a duty of reasonable care to protect her from the foreseeable criminal acts of third parties during her hospitalization.
In Sheridan, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the FTCA's assault and battery exception does not preclude suit where neither the assailant's "employment status nor his state of mind ha[d] any bearing on the basis for" the plaintiffs' claim. Id. at 403. In Sheridan, naval corpsmen undertook to assist an obviously armed and intoxicated serviceman, and they abandoned their efforts when he broke away and fled, later firing into the plaintiffs' car. The negligence claim arose not from the employment relationship between the assailant and the United States, but rather because of: (1) the Government's independent duty created by itsvoluntary adoption of regulations with respect to weapons reporting; and (2) the duty owed by the Government once it "voluntarily under[took] to provide care to a person who was visibly drunk and visibly armed." Id. at 401.
Under Sheridan, a claim for negligence may lie "where the negligence arises out of an independent, antecedent duty unrelated to the employment relationship between the tortfeasor and the United States." Leleux v. United States, 178 F.3d 750, 757 (5th Cir. 1999). In short, if the United States would have owed a plaintiff the same duty whether the assailant was a civilian or a government employee, the assault and battery exception does not re-erect immunity as an obstacle to an FTCA claim.
If Ms. Willett's allegations are proven, the United States would have owed her the same duty, whether her assailant was a hospital orderly, a vending machine serviceman, or a stranger who wandered into the hospital. Under Alabama law, the hospital owes a general duty of care, Ala. Code § 6-5-484, in addition to a more specific "duty to a sedated or anesthetized patient, who, because of such condition and the circumstances surrounding it, is dependent on the hospital." Young v. Huntsville Hosp., 595 So. 2d 1386, 1390 (Ala. 1992). The employment status of Ms. Willett's assailant is irrelevant to the duty owed based on the special relationship.
Gess v. United States is instructive on this point. 952 F. Supp. 1529 (M.D. Ala. 1996). In Gess, parents sued under the FTCA when a medical techniciansurreptitiously injected infants in an Air Force hospital's nursery with toxic doses of lidocaine. The court rejected the United States's argument that the FTCA's assault and battery exception barred the action because the hospital owed the infants a duty to protect them against the foreseeable criminal acts of third parties and, as in Sheridan, that duty was independent of the medical technician's status as a government employee. Id. at 1551.
This is not to say that the employment relationship is wholly irrelevant to the analysis. As illustrated by Gess, id. at 1558, information gained as a result of the employment relationship may make criminal acts foreseeable, and the foreseeability of the criminal acts is a necessary element for proving liability under Young and - by extension - under the FTCA. Presented with no binding authority to the contrary,2 the court finds that applying the assault and battery exception to prevent liability because criminal acts are foreseeable based in part3 on the employment relationshipbetween the assailant and the Government perversely exonerates "the Government because of the happenstance that [the assailant] was on a federal payroll." Sheridan, 487 U.S. at 402. So long as the duty arises independent of the employment relationship, it is of no moment that the employment relationship - rather than some other means - made the attack foreseeable. Sheridan focused on the independence of the employment status, not the independence of the foreseeability. Id. at 401 ().
Ms. Willett's earlier complaint lacked allegations allowing reliance on Sheridan. The allegations of her Second Amended Complaint, however, comport with Sheridan and are consistent...
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