英美侵权法判例-Dolan v. United States Postal Service |
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时间:2013-03-07
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546 U.S. 481 (2006), Supreme Court of the United States Background of the case On March 19, 2003, the district court granted the government's motion to dismiss, holding that Dolan's claim was barred by the postal exception to the FTCA waiver of immunity, which applied to "any claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter." Dolan appealed, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the dismissal.
Kennedy's majority opinion The Court found support for its interpretation in Kosak v. United States, 465 U.S. 848 (1984), a case involving a claim against the United States Customs Service. The Court in Kosak discussed the postal exception to the FTCA to contrast it from the more general Customs Service exception, noting that one of the principal purposes behind the FTCA was to waive the government's immunity from liability for car accidents caused by postal employees. The postal service exception was therefore drafted narrowly, such that it did not cover all negligence in the course of mail delivery, because postal trucks could be delivering (and therefore "transmitting") mail when they collide with other vehicles. The Court could find no basis in the text of the statute for distinguishing injuries such as Dolan's that were "caused by the mail itself" from those caused by the negligent driving of postal vehicles. "In both cases the postal employee acts negligently while transmitting mail." The Court also did not believe that the general rule applied that the government's waiver of immunity should be strictly interpreted in its favor. The Court considered this rule "unhelpful" in the FTCA context, because "unduly generous interpretations of the exceptions" would defeat the statute's central and sweeping purpose of waiving the government's immunity. Thomas's dissent Thomas considered that the discussion in Kosak at most established that the postal exception did not apply to auto accidents; that decision accordingly said nothing about "slip and fall" claims. Thomas furthermore believed that the Court in Kosak considered discrete acts determinative of the scope of Postal Service liability, rather than the consequences of those acts. Kosak therefore could not support for the majority's limitation, which was based on the consequence of the negligence—injury to the mail itself as opposed to injury caused by tripping over the mail. Thomas further argued that even if the postal exception was ambiguous, any such ambiguity as to the scope of the Government's waiver of immunity should be resolved in its favor. Thomas believed the majority erred in failing to apply this rule just because it was construing an exception to waiver rather than waiver itself. |
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