Background
During a 2017 operation targeting alleged gang member Joseph Riley, an FBI SWAT team led by Agent Lawrence Guerra raided the wrong Atlanta-area home. The team broke down the door, detonated a flash-bang grenade, entered with firearms, and handcuffed resident Hilliard Cliatt while Curtrina Martin and her seven-year-old son were inside. The intended residence was three houses away, on a different street and across an intervening intersection.
Martin, her son, and Cliatt sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act for false arrest and imprisonment, assault and battery, trespass and interference with property, emotional distress, and negligence. They also asserted a Fourth Amendment claim under Bivens against Guerra and other agents. After the Eleventh Circuit initially affirmed judgment for the defendants, the Supreme Court vacated that decision, rejected the circuit’s Supremacy Clause defense to FTCA liability, and directed the court to reconsider whether the FTCA’s discretionary-function exception barred the claims.
The Court’s Holding
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed judgment for the United States on all five FTCA counts. Bound by its precedents in Mesa v. United States and Shivers v. United States, the panel held that the agents’ planning and execution of the raid—including the alleged failure to conduct adequate advance surveillance and Guerra’s failure to verify the correct house upon arrival—fell within the discretionary-function exception. The exception therefore restored the United States’ sovereign immunity, even though the alleged conduct included intentional torts covered by the FTCA’s law-enforcement proviso and may have violated the Constitution.
The court reversed the grant of qualified immunity to Guerra on the Fourth Amendment claim. Viewing disputed facts and reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs’ favor, the panel treated Guerra as having conducted neither a site survey nor a pre-raid drive-by and considered evidence that he discarded his personal GPS after the raid. Under Hartsfield v. Lemacks, a reasonable jury could find that Guerra failed to make reasonable efforts to identify the place authorized for search. The panel held that materially similar precedent had clearly established by 1995 that such conduct violated the Fourth Amendment, and it remanded the claim for further proceedings.
Key Takeaways
- The FTCA’s law-enforcement proviso overcomes the intentional-tort exception but does not override the separate discretionary-function exception.
- Under binding Eleventh Circuit precedent, the discretionary-function exception barred the plaintiffs’ FTCA claims arising from both the preparation for and execution of the wrong-house raid.
- Guerra was not entitled to qualified immunity at summary judgment because the evidence, viewed favorably to the plaintiffs, could show that he made no reasonable effort to verify the target residence despite obvious differences between the homes and access to location technology.
Why It Matters
The decision produces different outcomes for the same raid depending on the defendant and legal theory: sovereign immunity bars the tort claims against the United States, while the individual-capacity Fourth Amendment claim against the raid leader may proceed beyond summary judgment. The ruling also underscores that FTCA immunity and qualified immunity involve distinct legal tests.
Judge Jordan, joined by Judges Pryor and Kidd, separately urged en banc reconsideration of the circuit’s broad discretionary-function jurisprudence. Although bound by precedent, he argued that a heedless failure to verify an address resembles an operational mistake rather than a policy judgment Congress intended to shield.