Federal Tort Claims Act (1946)

William V. Luneburg

Excerpt from the Federal Tort Claims Act

The United States shall be liable, respecting the provisions of this title relating to tort claims, in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances, but shall not be liable for interest prior to judgment or for punitive damages.

For centuries, the law has provided for compensation to individuals injured physically or otherwise by the actions of other private persons, including artificial "persons" such as corporations whose employees cause the harm. Significant parts of this liability fall within what is known as the law of torts. However, when the personal injuries are inflicted by the government through the actions of its employees, the ordinary rules of compensation do not apply unless the government takes special action to allow itself to be held liable. With regard to the federal government in particular, it is, as a general matter, immune from all liability under the law unless Congress consents to suit. This is the doctrine of sovereign immunity. As to the United States, the doctrine is not created by the Constitution itself but, rather, recognized by the federal courts in cases decided during the nineteenth century whose rationales have been criticized by various legal commentators. One of the conceptual underpinnings of the doctrine is that there can be no legal right against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends (Kawananakoa v. Polyblack [1907]).

The significance of allowing the United States government to be immune from suit can be fully appreciated only when it is realized that it employs millions of people to do its work, and that work is, more often than not, very similar, if not identical, to that which gives rise to tort liability of private persons. For example, federal employees routinely drive government-owned vehicles as part of their daily routine and, not surprisingly, are involved in automobile accidents. The federal government runs hundreds of hospitals and medical clinics that serve veterans and others; mistakes in treatment are no less common there than in private medical practices against which medical malpractice suits are common. And this is just the tip of the proverbial "iceberg." Of course, the potential magnitude of the government's legal liability can be—and has been—seen as a reason to urge for restricting the government's ability to be sued for compensation.

Given sovereign immunity, the traditional means for affording compensation to persons injured by the federal government was not a suit in court but rather, a so-called private bill enacted by both houses of Congress and signed by the president (as in the case of other legislation). Indeed, the first private bill providing redress for a tort claim was enacted as long ago as 1792. However, the mounting volume of these bills during the nineteenth century, the burdens on Congress in considering them, the perceived capriciousness of the process for their introduction and enactment, and the unfairness of leaving persons without any compensation for serious injuries provoked Presidents Fillmore and Lincoln, among others, to suggest that some type of adjudicatory process outside Congress was required to deal adequately with the claims presented.

In 1855, and then in 1887, with the enactment of the Tucker Act, Congress waived the sovereign immunity of the United States with regard to monetary claims other than tort claims (e.g., claims based on contracts with the government). As time went on, Congress enacted various limited waivers of immunity with regard to tort liability, as in connection with the federal operation of railroads during World War I and the operation of government maritime vessels. Those limited provisions for liability were part of a thirty-year debate on the need for a more comprehensive waiver of immunity from suit with regard to the torts committed by federal employees.

With the number of private bills being introduced each year in Congress growing into the thousands, and the majority of tort claimants being left without any remedy, resistance to change in the law weakened significantly. After an army bomber flew into the Empire State Building on a misty Saturday morning in July 1945, killing or injuring a number of people who found, to their dismay, that the most obvious party to sue (the United States) was immune from liability, whatever was left of the argument in favor of general United States immunity from suit for the tortuous acts of its employees rapidly dissipated. One year later, the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) (P.L. 79-601, 60 Stat. 842) became law, and the victims of the Empire State Building crash were among the first to bring suit under the new statute.

PROVISIONS OF THE FEDERAL TORT CLAIMS ACT

The FTCA grants exclusive jurisdiction to the federal courts to dispose of claims by individuals and corporations against the United States where the lawsuits seek compensation ("money damages") "for injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee" of the United States where that employee acted in performance of his or her governmental duties if the same action resulting in injury would impose liability on a private individual under state law in similar circumstances.

There is a deceptive simplicity with regard to this statement of a general waiver of immunity from suit for tort claims, as is demonstrated by the numerous decisions issued by the Supreme Court and other federal courts attempting to interpret and apply the FTCA over the past sixty years. For example, can the United States be liable without a showing of "fault" (e.g., negligence)? (No.) When can it be said that a governmental employee inflicted injury in the course of the employee's duties (e.g., the car accident occurred on the way from the employee's lunch to his or her duty station)? Do there exist unique governmental functions (e.g., running a lighthouse where the light goes out causing a shipwreck) as to which Congress intended to preserve immunity? (Perhaps, but the Supreme Court has not yet identified them.) And, finally, if the wrongful act takes place in one state and the injury in another and the laws of each state are different, what law applies? (The FTCA is itself clear only in requiring that "state law" must apply.)

One issue that the FTCA, as originally enacted, did not address was the liability of the federal employee to the injured person. Both before and after 1946, the law was clear that federal employees could themselves be liable to the injured person under state law in some circumstances. However, one of the potential costs of such liability is that federal employees become unduly timid in doing their jobs to avoid lawsuits and, as a result, the public interest suffers. Congress dealt squarely with this problem in the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988, commonly known as the Westfall Act after the Supreme Court case that it overruled. Today, when a federal employee is sued to collect money damages for an action performed within the scope of his or her employment, the United States is substituted as the defendant and the employee is excused from the case without the potential for any personal liability. This substitution is not available, however, if the employee's action violated the United States Constitution in circumstances where the courts allow a damage remedy against the employee for that violation.

EXCEPTIONS TO FEDERAL TORT CLAIM LIABILITY

If all of this is not complicated enough, Congress has enacted numerous exceptions to FTCA liability, and the Supreme Court itself has created an important one. The same rationale cannot be offered to support each and every exception. A few of these exceptions should be noted here.

Many torts involving the intentional conduct of federal employees (like assault and battery) cannot be the basis for United States liability under the FTCA. In such cases, it might be argued that it is unfair to penalize the government where the employee is more directly at fault. Nevertheless, there is a category of intentional torts for which the United States can be held liable, including those attributable to the actions of a federal investigative or law enforcement officer.

Not surprisingly, claims arising out of combatant activities in time of war (e.g., one serviceman shoots another by mistake during battle) are excluded.

Another exception of immense importance encompasses actions of federal employees that are considered to involve a "discretionary function." The Supreme Court has struggled, with mixed success since 1953 (Dalehite v. United States ) in trying to impose limits on this exception to prevent it from almost entirely swallowing tort liability (since almost every action of a government official involves some discretion, i.e. choice) while, at the same time, protecting governmental functions that Congress probably did not want to affect by the imposition of tort liability (e.g., making important policy decisions).

Finally, the Supreme Court itself has created an exception to FTCA liability: U.S. service personnel injured "incident to service" cannot sue the United States in tort (Feres v. United States [1950]). While the rationales offered for this exception have varied over the years, the one most prominently invoked today is an alleged concern for the effect of liability on military discipline.

In order to encourage the administrative resolution of tort claims arising under the FTCA and to avoid costs imposed by litigation, the injured person must first present his or her claim to the federal agency whose employee allegedly caused the injury. Only after waiting a designated period or obtaining a denial of the claim from the agency (whichever first occurs) can the claimant resort to federal court in a suit against the United States under the FTCA.

Although the FTCA obviously has not removed all of the inequities imposed by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, as a general matter, it goes a long way toward ensuring that the government itself is not above the law.

See also: Administrative Procedure Act; Federal Employers' Liability Act.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Developments in the Law—Remedies against the United States and Its Officials." Harvard Law Review 70 (1957): 827–938.

Jaffe, Louis. "Suits against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity." Harvard Law Review 77 (1963): 1–39.

Jayson, Lester S. Handling Federal Tort Claims: Administrative and Judicial Remedies. Albany, NY: Matthew Bender, 1964.

Lester, Urban A., and Michael F. Noone, eds., "The Federal Tort Claims Act." Litigation with the Federal Government, 3d ed. Philadelphia, PA: American Law Institute–American Bar Association, 1994.

Wright, William B. The Federal Tort Claims Act Analyzed and Annotated. New York: Central Book Co., 1957.

INTERNET RESOURCE

U.S. Department of Justice Home Page. <http://www.usdoj.gov/>.

FEDERAL TORT CLAIMS ACT

Enacted in 1946 the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) (60 Stat. 842) removed the inherent immunity of the federal government from most tort actions brought against it and established the conditions for the commencement of such suits.

The FTCA permits persons to sue the government of the United States in federal court for

money damages,…for injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government while 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.A. § 1346(b))

In passing the FTCA, Congress allowed the federal government to be sued. Congress also made specific exceptions to the act, and the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted one provision broadly, both actions resulting in the dismissal of many plaintiffs' lawsuits.

In consenting to be sued, the federal government waived the sovereign immunity it had enjoyed in the past. Justice oliver wendell holmes jr., in Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U.S. 349, 27 S. Ct. 526, 51 L. Ed. 834 (1907), explained that a "sovereign is exempt from suit, not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends." As early as the 1821 case of Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 5 L. Ed. 257, the Supreme Court recognized the sovereign immunity of the United States.

Nevertheless, during the nineteenth century, Congress consented to let the federal government be sued in several causes of action. Congress established the Court of Claims in 1855 (28 U.S.C.A. § 171) to entertain contract actions against the United States. The passage of the tucker act (28 U.S.C.A. § 1346[a] [2], 1491) in 1887 broadened that court's jurisdiction to include designated nontort actions, including eminent domain cases. But, until 1946, there was no readily accessible remedy for tort actions brought by citizens of the United States. The routine recourse was for members of Congress to introduce private bills for constituents who had been injured by government negligence. Congress eventually recognized that the private bill method was not an effective way to deal with the problem and passed the FTCA.

Now a person who alleges that an employee of the federal government has caused injury must commence a lawsuit pursuant to the FTCA. Once filed, the FTCA lawsuit becomes the plaintiff's exclusive remedy, regardless of any statute that expressly or impliedly permits actions against a designated agency. A federal judge hears the case without a jury.

Congress did not categorically waive sovereign immunity in the FTCA. The act contains 13 exceptions, which release the federal government from any liability for, among other things, enforcing unconstitutional statutes, losing letters in the post office, actions of the military in time of war, damages caused by the fiscal operations of the treasury department or regulation of the monetary system, collecting custom duties, claims arising in a foreign country, and most intentional torts (28 U.S.C.A. § 2680).

The most important and troublesome exception has been the FTCA discretionary function exception. Under this provision, the waiver of immunity does not apply to any claim "based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused" (28 U.S.C. § 2680[a]). In Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15, 73 S. Ct. 956, 97 L. Ed. 1427 (1953), the U.S. Supreme Court broadly interpreted the discretionary function exception to include all situations involving the formulation or execution of plans that were drawn at a high level of government and that entailed exercise of judgment. In Dalehite, federal government workers in Texas were negligent in packing and shipping explosive material, and their negligence resulted in the death of 536 people. The Court ruled that the workers were following specifications prepared by superiors in Washington, D.C., who were exercising their discretion. Therefore, the discretionary function exception applied and the government was immune from suit. The Court distinguished between decisions made at the planning and policy stage and those conducted at the lower, or "operational," levels that implement the policy decisions, even if some judgment or discretion is exercised in carrying out such decisions.

The Dalehite decision has limited the effectiveness of the FTCA for persons injured by the government. Some commentators have criticized the Court for allowing the discretionary function exception to swallow the FTCA. Many cases center on whether the alleged tortious conduct involved the exercise of discretion or was merely ministerial (carrying out a designated act), although virtually any act by a government employee is either directly or indirectly the outcome of an exercise of discretion.

The Supreme Court has placed other limitations on the scope of the FTCA. In Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 71 S. Ct. 153, 95 L. Ed. 152 (1950), the Court interpreted the FTCA to bar claims by members of the armed forces and their families for injuries arising out of or in the course of activity related to military service. In Laird v. Nelms, 406 U.S. 797, 92 S. Ct. 1899, 32L. Ed. 2d 499 (1972), the Court held that the requirement of a "wrongful" act means the United States is not liable under any state rule imposing strict liability.

The FTCA's exception for intentional torts, such as assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, and libel, was modified in 1974, in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Bivensv. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S. Ct. 1999, 29 L. Ed. 2d 619 (1971). In Bivens the Court held that federal law enforcement officers could be sued personally for violation of a person's constitutional rights. The FTCA was subsequently amended to make actionable conduct "of investigative or law enforcement officers of the United States Government" involving assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution. This inclusion does not repeal the personal liability of the officers themselves, but it does make it more likely that a plaintiff will seek to sue the government, because the government has more money than its employees. The government is also liable for torts such as trespass and invasion of privacy.

In 1988, the Supreme Court significantly altered the balance between the public interest in granting federal employees immunity from personal suits and the right to sue those employees personally for damages caused by their conduct. In Westfall v. Erwin, 484 U.S. 292, 108 S. Ct. 580, 98 L. Ed. 2d 619 (1988), the Court ruled that a federal employee is not absolutely immune for official actions "unless the challenged conduct is within the outer perimeter of an official's duties and is discretionary in nature." Westfall denied most rank-and-file federal employees immunity from lawsuits against them personally for common-law torts committed in the scope of employment.

In response, Congress quickly passed the Federal Employees Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988 (102 Stat. 4563) as an amendment to the FTCA. The act overruled Westfall by broadening the class of activities given immunity. Originally limited to the operation of motor vehicles, the act gave immunity to any wrongful or negligent act that an employee commits while acting within the scope of his or her office or employment. Congress required the government to accept sole responsibility for its employees' actions in the scope of employment, leaving those employees free to administer government policies without fear of personal liability.

further readings

Committee on Indian Affairs. 2000. Federal Tort Claims Act: Issues Affecting Coverage for Tribal Self-Determination Contracts. Washington, D.C.: Government Accounting Office.

General Accounting Office. 2000 Federal Tort Claims Act Issues Affecting Coverage for Tribal Self-Determination Contracts: Report to the Chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs, U.S. Senate. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Morris, Daniel A. 1991. "Federal Employees' Liability Since the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988." Creighton Law Review 25.

Niles, Mark C. 2002. "'Nothing But Mischief': the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Scope of Discretionary Immunity." Administrative Law Review 54 (fall).

Reynolds, Osborne M., Jr. 1989. "The Discretionary Function Exception of the Federal Tort Claims Act: Time for Reconsideration." Oklahoma Law Review 42.

Zabel, Matthew L. 2003. "Advisory Juries and their Use and Misuse in Federal Tort Claims Act Cases." Brigham Young University Law Review 2003 (winter).

cross-references

Feres Doctrine.

Federal Tort Claims Act

A federal statute enacted in 1946 that removed the inherent immunity of the federal government from most tort actions brought against it and established the conditions for the commencement of such suits.

Will v. Hallock

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346 waives the federal government's sovereign immunity in certain circumstances to permit persons to sue it for damages. However, there are exceptions and limitations. In Will v. Hallock, ___U.S.___, 126 S.Ct. 952, 163 L.Ed.2d 836 (2006), a married couple sued under the FTCA claiming that government agents had destroyed the wife's computerized business records during an investigation into child pornography. It later was revealed that the husband had been the victim of identity theft and no criminal charges were brought. Under an exception to the FTCA, the court dismissed the claim but the couple had also filed a civil rights lawsuit against the government agents in their personal capacity. The court refused to dismiss this lawsuit after the FTCA was thrown out, triggering an appeal from the agents. The Supreme Court did not address the merits of the agents' claims, ruling that they had no right to appeal this issue until the a final decision had been made in the district court.

Susan Hallock owned a computer software business that she operated from home with her husband Richard. Richard's credit card information was stolen and used to pay for a child pornography web site subscription. Agents of the U.S. Custom Service traced the payment to Hal-lock's credit card account and obtained a search warrant for the Hallocks' home. The agents took all the computer equipment, software, and disk drives from the home. When Richard proved that he was a victim of identity theft the investigation was dropped and the seized property was returned. However, several of the disk drives were damaged and all the data on the drives was lost. As a result the Hallocks were forced to close the business.

They sued the federal government under the FTCA, alleging that the agents had been negli-gent in searching their property. However, the Hallocks did not get a chance to a hearing on the merits of their case. The district court agreed with the government that the suit must be dismissed because of an FTCA detention-of-goods exception: when agents' activities occur during the course of detaining goods the government does not surrender its sovereign immunity. While the FTCA claim was pending, Susan Hal-lock filed a federal civil rights suit for damages against the Custom Service agents, alleging that they had deprived her of her property, including business income, in violation of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. After the FTCA had been dismissed by the court, the agents sought to use a provision of the FTCA to have Susan Hallock's lawsuit dismissed. Under this provision, a judgment in an FTCA action "shall constitute a complete bar to any action by the claimant, by reason of the same subject matter, against the employee of the government whose act or omission gave rise to the claim." 28 U.S.C.A. § 2676. The district court denied the motion to dismiss, ruling that the dismissal of the FTCA claim was based only on a procedural ground and did not qualify as a "judgment bar" under the FTCA provision. The agents appealed this ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the lower court ruling. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the agents' appeal to resolve the judgment bar issue.

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declined to rule on the merits of the agents' appeals, concluding that the Second Circuit did not have jurisdiction to hear the appeal. Justice David Souter, writing for the Court, noted that in the federal courts, most rulings made by the district court that do not resolve the case are not immediately appealable. Such "collateral order" appeals are reserved for a small number of issues and are the exception, not the rule. The rule, as mandated by Congress, grants jurisdiction to the circuit courts of appeals to review all "final decisions" of the district courts that are not immediately appealable to the Supreme Court. The Court established the "collateral order doctrine" to deal with a small class of rulings that do not conclude the litigation but conclusively resolve "claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action." A collateral order appeal will be granted if it meets three conditions: (1) it conclusively determines the disputed question; (2) it resolves completely an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action; and (3) it would be effectively unreviewable on an appeal from a final judgment.

Justice Souter pointed out that orders rejecting absolute or qualified immunity of government officials are appealable under the collateral order doctrine, as our orders denying a state Eleventh Amendment immunity. These are orders that deny "an asserted right to avoid the burdens of trial," and which cannot be reviewed effectively if the case proceeded to a conventional judgment. Justice Souter conceded that these examples "admittedly raise the lawyer's temptation to generalize" to a level where most orders would be immediately appealable, but it would leave the final order statute "in tatters." The proper way to look at the immunity exceptions was as the "avoidance of a trial that would imperil a substantial public interest," such as "honoring the separation of powers, [and] preserving the efficiency of government and the initiative of its officials."

The custom agents failed to show "such a weighty public objective" that would serve to invoke a collateral order appeal. The agents merely wanted to avoid "litigation for its own sake." The final decision requirement would "fade out whenever the government or an official lost an early round that could have stopped the fight." In addition, the agents could not have made their judgment bar claim if Susan Hallock had only filed the civil rights suit. This was different from an immunity claim, which can be invoked by a government official at the beginning of a lawsuit. Therefore, the appeal was dismissed. The agents could raise the judgment bar issue if they lost at the district court after a hearing on the merits by a judge or jury.

Federal Tort Claims Act

A federal statute enacted in 1946 that removed the inherent immunity of the federal government from most tort actions brought against it and established the conditions for the commencement of such suits.

Barrett v. United States

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C.A. §1346, waives the federal government's sovereign immunity in certain circumstances to permit persons to sue it for damages. Though the government voluntary waives its immunity in the FTCA, it places conditions on when a person may sue. One requirement is that the person must exhaust all administrative remedies with the federal government before filing suit. A failure to exhaust these remedies can lead to the dismissal of the lawsuit. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in, Barrett v. United States, 462 F.3d 28(1st Cir.2006), reaffirmed this consequence, ruling that a lawsuit filed by a murder victim's wife must be dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. This defect, coupled with other procedural errors, meant that the lawsuit would not be heard.

The case arose out the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) mishandling of informants involved in organized crime. Arthur Barrett was kidnapped and murdered in 1983 by James Bulger, Stephen Flemmi, and Kevin Weeks. The FBI protected Bulger and Flemmi from the investigation and prosecution of these crimes because they were confidential informants. A 1999 criminal case discussed the FBI's relationship with the two informants and noted that the FBI had been informed Bulger killed Barrett. Barrett's body was exhumed from a ditch next to a Massachusetts highway in January 2000. His identity was confirmed in March 2000 when Elaine Barrett, Arthur Barrett's widow, told the press that the government was responsible for his death by allowing the informants to continue their criminal ways while serving as informants. Barrett's body was released to her in April 2000. In January 2003 Elaine Barrett filed an administrative tort claim under the FTCA, alleging that her husband's injuries and death were caused by the negligent and wrongful acts of the FBI. On April 3, 2003, before the government ruled on the claim, Barrett filed a lawsuit in federal district court seeking damages from the government under the FTCA and damages from eight FBI agents, Bulger, Flemmi, and Weeks. They were sued under a federal civil rights cause of action and a Massachusetts wrongful death statute. On April 15, 2003 the Department of Justice denied Barrett's FTCA administrative claim as untimely based on the FTCA's two-year statute of limitations. In November 2003 the government filed a motion to dismiss the court case and two of the agents filed similar motions over the next two months. The district court dismissed the government from the case in September 2004, ruling that Barrett had missed the two-year statute of limitations under the FTCA. It also dismissed the two agents from the lawsuit because she had missed the three-year statute of limitations for the federal civil rights and wrongful death claims. By April 2005, the court had dismissed Barrett's claims against the remaining agents. Barrett filed an appeal in June 2005 that sought to challenge all the dismissal orders from 2004 and 2005.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of the claims against the government and the agents. Though the appeals court broadly construed its jurisdiction to consider all of the orders (the appeal of the 2004 orders could have been viewed as untimely), it concluded that Barrett had made several procedural errors that doomed her case. As to the FTCA claim, the waiver of government sovereignty was "closely circumscribed by the terms of the statute." The statute stated that a court action could not be instituted until the claimant filed an administrative claim and received a written disposition from the federal agency within six months of the filing. If the agency failed to respond within six months this inaction would be treated as a denial of the claim. The government argued that the district court had no jurisdiction to consider Barrett's FTCA claim because she filed the lawsuit 12 days before the Department of Justice issued its formal denial. Barrett countered that though she had filed the lawsuit in early April she had not served the defendants with the complaint until September 2003, well past the issuance of the administrative claim denial. The appeals court rejected Barrett's argument because it was unsupported by any case law that indicated a service date rather than a filing date determined whether she had exhausted her administrative remedies.

The appeals court then looked at the timeliness of Barrett's civil rights and wrongful death claims. Both claims were governed by a three-year statute of limitations. The clock started running on Barrett's appeal time when an action "accrued." This meant that an action began to run when Barrett knew or had reason to know of the existence and cause of the injuries committed upon her husband. Either actual knowledge or constructive knowledge of who killed her husband was sufficient to start the clock. The government argued that she missed the deadline by approximately one month. She had filed her complaint on April 2, 2003. Therefore, her lawsuit would be untimely if she had reason to know who killed her husband prior to April 2, 2000. Barrett's statement to the press in early March 2000 proved her downfall. The appeals court found that her statement indicated that she believed the government was responsible for the killing of Arthur Barrett. She appeared to have actual knowledge at that time, thus making her remaining claims untimely.

Though the court acknowledged the FBI's misconduct was a "tragedy" and that the FTCA exhaustion requirement as well as the statute of limitations rules might have defeated a meritorious claim, these requirements served important purposes. The fact that other plaintiffs had followed these requirements demonstrated that they were not intended to frustrate diligent litigants.