Opinion · Supreme Court of the United States

United States v. Spelar

338 U.S. 217

Type
Opinion
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Date
1949-11-07
Topic
general

How later courts describe this case

  • holding that the foreign country exception covered injuries suffered at a United States military base in Newfoundland maintained pursuant to a 99-year lease with Great Britain
  • holding that "claims arising in a foreign country” exclusion in Federal Tori Claims Act applies lo a leased U.S. airbase in Newfoundland because the base remained subject to the sovereignty of Great Britain and therefore lay within a “foreign country”
  • holding that "claims arising in a foreign country" exclusion in Federal Tort Claims Act applies to a leased U.S. airbase in Newfoundland because the base remained subject to the sovereignty of Great Britain and therefore lay within a "foreign country"
  • stating that an “air base” located in Newfoundland, which was leased to and operated by the United States, was considered to be a foreign country under the FTCA
  • finding phrase “ ‘foreign country’ [within the context of the FTCA] to denote territory subject to the sovereignty of another nation” and without the sovereignty of the United States
  • construing the Federal Tort Claims Act not to apply to an American military air base in Newfoundland because the lease between Newfoundland and the United States “effected no transfer of sovereignty with respect to the military bases concerned”
  • barring claim arising at United States leased air base in Newfoundland
  • purpose of foreign country exception is to avoid having another country’s law define the scope of the federal government’s tort liability

Citator

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Authority status
pending
Cited by
144 opinions
UNITED STATESv. SPELAR,338 U.S. 217(1949)
70 S.Ct. 10
UNITED STATESv. SPELAR, ADMINISTRATRIX.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT.
No. 42.
Argued October 18, 1949.
Decided November 7, 1949.
The Federal Tort Claims Act, which is inapplicable by its terms to any claim "arising in a foreign country," does not authorize an action against the United States for an allegedly wrongful death occurring at a Newfoundland air base under long-term lease from Great Britain to the United States and allegedly resulting from the negligent operation of the air base by the United States.Vermilya-BrownCo. v.Connell,335 U.S. 377, distinguished. Pp. 218-222.171 F.2d 208, reversed.
The District Court dismissed an action brought against
the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, to
recover for the allegedly wrongful death of a flight engineer
at an air field in Newfoundland leased by the
United States from Great Britain.75 F. Supp. 967.
The Court of Appeals reversed.171 F.2d 208. This
Court granted certiorari.336 U.S. 950.Reversed, p.
222.
Samuel D. Sladeargued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief wereSolicitor General Perlman,Assistant Attorney General Morison, Robert L. SternandCecelia H. Goetz.Arnold B. Elkindargued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief wasGerald F. Finley.Page 218
MR. JUSTICE REED delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Federal Tort Claims Act is inapplicable by its terms to "any claim arising in a foreign country."1The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held that this provision does not bar suit against the Government for an allegedly wrongful death occurring at a Newfoundland air base under long-term lease to the United States.2We are here asked to review that decision.

Flight engineer Mark Spelar, an employee of American Overseas Airlines, was killed on October 3, 1946, in a take-off crash at Harmon Field, Newfoundland. This air base is one of the areas leased for ninety-nine years by Great Britain to the United States pursuant to the same executive agreement and leases discussed at length inVermilya-Brown Co. v.Connell,335 U.S. 377. Spelar's administratrix, respondent here, initiated this action against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of New York, the district where she resides. She alleges that the fatal accident was caused by the Government's negligent operation of Harmon Field. The local law which underlies her cause of action is Newfoundland's wrongful death statute authorizing the executor or administrator to bring suit for death arising from negligence.3Upon the Government's motion, the District Court held the claim to be one "arising in a foreignPage 219country," and dismissed the complaint for want of jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals reversed. Our decision inVermilya-Brownthat the Fair Labor Standards Act applies to such leased military bases was deemed "persuasive, if not well-nigh conclusive" of the issue here.4Because of this broad interpretation put upon our opinion inVermilya-Brown, and because the decision substantially affects the area of private suit against the Government, we granted certiorari,336 U.S. 950.

We are of the opinion that the court below has erred. Sufficient basis for our conclusion lies in the express words of the statute. We know of no more accurate phrase in common English usage than "foreign country" to denote territory subject to the sovereignty of another nation.5By the exclusion of claims "arising in a foreign country," the coverage of the Federal Tort Claims Act was geared to the sovereignty of the United States. We repeat what was said inVermilya-Brownat page 380: "The arrangements under which the leased bases were acquired from Great Britain did not and were not intended to transfer sovereignty over the leased areas from Great Britain to the United States." Harmon Field, where this claim "arose," remained subject to the sovereignty of Great Britain and lay within a "foreign country." The claim must be barred.

If the words of the statute were not enough, however, to sustain our result, we think the legislative history behind this provision concludes all doubt. The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946 was the product of some twenty-eight years of congressional drafting and redrafting,Page 220amendment and counter-amendment.6The draft being considered in 1942 by the House Committee on the Judiciary exempted all claims "arising in a foreign country in behalf of an alien."7At the suggestion of the Attorney General, the last five words were excised in a revised version of the bill,8so that the exemption provision assumed the form which was ultimately enacted into law.9The superseded draft had made the waiver of the Government's traditional immunity turn upon the fortuitous circumstance of the injured party's citizenship. ThePage 221amended version identified the coverage of the Act with the scope of United States sovereignty. The record of the Hearings tells us why. We quote the pertinent colloquy between Assistant Attorney General Francis M. Shea, who explained the Attorney General's revised version of the bill to the House Committee on the Judiciary, and Congressman Robsion of that committee.
"MR. SHEA. . . . Claims arising in a foreign country have been exempted from this bill, H.R. 6463, whether or not the claimant is an alien. Since liability is to be determined by the law of the situs of the wrongful act or omission it is wise to restrict the bill to claims arising in this country. This seems desirable because the law of the particular State is being applied. Otherwise, it will lead I think to a good deal of difficulty.
"MR. ROBSION. You mean by that any representative of the United States who committed a tort in England or some other country could not be reached under this?
"MR. SHEA. That is right. That would have to come to the Committee on Claims in the Congress."10


In brief, though Congress was ready to lay aside a great portion of the sovereign's ancient and unquestioned immunity from suit, it was unwilling to subject the United States to liabilities depending upon the laws of a foreign power. The legislative will must be respected. The present suit, premised entirely upon Newfoundland's law, may not be asserted against the United States in contravention of that will.

To the extent thatVermilya-Brown Co. v.Connellhas any application to the case at bar, it stands as authority for our result here, for it postulates that the executive agreement and leases effected no transfer of sovereigntyPage 222with respect to the military bases concerned.11For the rest, we there held no more than that the word "possessions" does not necessarily imply sovereignty, and concluded as a matter of interpretation of the legislative history of the Fair Labor Standards Act that the leased bases, not in existence at the time the Act was passed, were to be included as "possessions" in the sense in which that word was used in that statute. The statutory language and the legislative record relating to the ambit of the Federal Tort Claims Act differ entirely from those pertinent to the Fair Labor Standards Act; and since the bases had been leased to the United States prior to the enactment of the statute here involved, theVermilya-Brownproblem of determining what Congress would have done when faced with a new situation does not exist at all in the present case.

InFoley Bros. v.Filardo,12we had occasion to refer to the "canon of construction which teaches that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States . . . ." That presumption, far from being overcome here, is doubly fortified by the language of this statute and the legislative purpose underlying it.

The decision must beReversed.

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, concurring.
In some aspects, no doubt, every statute presents a unique problem for interpretation. But the presuppositions of the judicial process in construing legislationPage 223should be neither capricious norad hoc. While normally, therefore, it is not very fruitful to express disagreement either with the rendering of a particular statute or the mode by which that is reached, where this involves implications touching the very process of judicial construction silence may carry significance beyond the immediate case.

I agree that the Federal Tort Claims Act does not afford a right of action for the negligent conduct of the Government, through its employees, at one of the bases held by the United States under the long-term arrangements made with Great Britain. But the road traveled by the Court's opinion in reaching this result does not seem to me the way to get there.

The Court's opinion finds the phrase "foreign country," in that Act's restriction against claims "arising in a foreign country," to be as compelling in excluding the Newfoundland air base, under the kind of control that the United States exercises at these bases, as less than a year ago it found the term "possessions" in the Fair Labor Standards Act to be compelling in including these bases.Vermilya-Brown Co. v.Connell,335 U.S. 377. To assume that terms like "foreign country" and "possessions" are self-defining, not at all involving a choice of judicial judgment, is mechanical jurisprudence at its best. These terms do not have fixed and inclusive meanings, as is true of mathematical and other scientific terms. Both "possessions" and "foreign country" have penumbral meanings, which is not true, for instance, of the verbal designations for weights and measures. It is this precision of content which differentiates scientific from most political, legislative and legal language.

A "foreign country" in which the United States has no territorial control does not bear the same relation to the United States as a "foreign country" in which the United States does have the territorial control that it has in the air base in Newfoundland. In the entangling relationshipsPage 224between such nations as Great Britain and this country, it is not compelling that "foreign country" means today what it may have meant in the days of Chief Justice Marshall, or even in those of Mr. Justice Brown. The very concept of "sovereignty" is in a state of more or less solution these days. To find a single and undeviating content for "foreign country" necessarily excluding these bases, while "possessions" of the United States is to be deemed as necessarily including them, despite the momentum of historic meaning and experience leading to a contrary significance of "possessions," is to give the appearance of logically compulsive force to decisions. It fails to recognize the scope of supple words that are the raw materials of legislation and adjudication and is unmindful of those considerations of policy which underlie, consciously or unconsciously, seemingly variant decisions. When so many able judges can so misconceive the implications of our decision inVermilya-Brown Co. v.Connell,supra, as they have been found to misconceive them, the source of difficulty cannot be wholly with these able lower court judges.

The considerations that led me to join in the dissent inVermilya-Brown Co. v.Connell, supra, lead me to concur with the Court's construction of the Tort Claims Act in this case.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring.
I reach the same result; but I could hardly do so, as does the Court, by reiteration of the prevailing opinion inVermilya-Brown Co. v.Connell,335 U.S. 377. That decision, taken with the present one, adds up to this: If an employee should chance to work overtime on a leased air base, he can maintain an action for extra wages, penalties and interest, because the Court finds the air base to be a "possession" of the United States. However, if he is injured at the same place, he may not proceed underPage 225the Tort Claims Act to recover, because the Court finds the air base then to be a "foreign country." To those uninitiated in modern methods of statutory construction it may seem a somewhat esoteric doctrine that the same place at the same time may legally be both a possession of the United States and a foreign country. This disparity results from holding that Congress, when it refers to our leased air bases, at one time calls them "possessions" and at another "foreign countries." While congressional incoherence of thought or of speech is not unconstitutional and Congress can use a contrariety of terms to describe the same thing, we should pay Congress the respect of not assuming lightly that it indulges in inconsistencies of speech which make the English language almost meaningless. There is some reason to think the inconsistency lies in the Court's rendering of the statutes rather than in the way Congress has written them. At all events, the present decision seems to me correct, and, so far as it is contradicted by the effect ofVermilya-Brown, I think we should retreat from the latter.Page 226
  1. Page 21862 Stat. 984, 28 U.S.C. (Supp. II) § 2680(k). The language was identical at the time this suit was instituted though at that time contained in60 Stat. 846, 28 U.S.C. § 943 (k). ↩
  2. Page 218Spelarv.United States,171 F.2d 208. ↩
  3. Page 218 Cons. Stats. of Newfoundland (3d Series), c. 213. Local law must be pleaded since the Federal Tort Claims Act permits suit only "where the United States, if a private person, would be liable . . . in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred."60 Stat. 843, 28 U.S.C. § 931 (a). The substance of this provision is now embodied in62 Stat. 933, 28 U.S.C. (Supp. II) § 1346(b). ↩
  4. Page 219Spelarv.United States,171 F.2d 208,209. ↩
  5. Page 219 See Mr. Justice Brown for the Court inDe Limav.Bidwell,182 U.S. 1,180: "A foreign country was defined by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall and Mr. Justice Story to be one exclusively within the sovereignty of a foreign nation, and without the sovereignty of the United States.The Boat Eliza, 2 Gall. 4;Taberv.United States, 1 Story, 1;The Ship Adventure, 1 Brock. 235, 241." ↩
  6. Page 220 Agitation for reform of the cumbersome private bill procedure bore its first fruit in H.R. 14737 introduced in the third Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress in 1919. The subject was almost continuously before one House or the other until the final passage of the substance of the present Act by the Seventy-ninth Congress. In the revision of the Judicial Code, Act of June 25, 1948,62 Stat. 869, minor amendments, not relevant here, were made. ↩
  7. Page 220 H.R. 5373, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., § 303 (12). ↩
  8. Page 220 Hearings, H.R. 5373 and H.R. 6463, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 29, 35, 66. The Attorney General's revised version was H.R. 6463, § 402 (12). ↩
  9. Page 220 The shape of the Federal Tort Claims Act was largely determined during its consideration in the course of the 77th Congress. Subsequently the bill was reintroduced without substantial modification or further hearings until its enactment during the 79th Congress. The revised version of the tort claims bill introduced during the 2d session of the 77th Congress, S. 2221, was reported favorably by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary (S. Rep. No. 1196, 77th Cong., 2d Sess.), and passed the Senate. 88 Cong. Rec. 3174. The House Committee on the Judiciary, to which it was then referred, and which had been holding hearings on H.R. 6463, the companion measure to S. 2221, the bill passed by the Senate, reported the bill favorably (H.R. Rep. No. 2245, 77th Cong., 2d Sess.), but it was never considered by the House. It was reintroduced in the 78th Congress (H.R. 1356, 78th Cong., 1st Sess.; S. 1114, 78th Cong., 1st Sess.), but no action was taken and again in the 79th Congress (H.R. 181, reported in H.R. Rep. No. 1287, 79th Cong., 1st Sess.). It was finally passed by the 79th Congress as part of the omnibus Legislative Reorganization Act.60 Stat. 842. ↩
  10. Page 221 Hearings,supranote 8, p. 35. ↩
  11. Page 222Vermilya-Brown Co. v.Connell,335 U.S. 377,380. ↩
  12. Page 222336 U.S. 281,285. The case holds the Eight Hour Law inapplicable to Government contractors working on military bases not under lease to the United States. ↩