Background
Schrade Jones and Carter Gilliam were bowfishing at night on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville when their boat struck an unmarked, partially submerged duck blind at approximately 25 miles per hour. Both men suffered severe injuries. Unknown individuals had built the blind before 2007 on submerged land owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Jones and Gilliam sued the United States, acting through the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers, and the TVA for negligence and wantonness in failing to mark, remove, or warn about the blind. They invoked sovereign-immunity waivers in the Suits in Admiralty Act and, as to the TVA, the TVA Act’s sue-and-be-sued clause. The district court dismissed the action for lack of jurisdiction, concluding that the challenged conduct fell within the discretionary-function exception applied to SAA claims.
The Court’s Holding
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the SAA claims. Under binding circuit precedent beginning with Williams v. United States, the SAA contains an implied discretionary-function exception. Neither earlier precedent nor the Supreme Court’s decision in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority displaced that circuit rule.
The decisions whether to mark, remove, or warn about the duck blind involved judgment or choice because no statute, regulation, or policy required a specific response. Those decisions were also susceptible to policy analysis involving navigation needs, boater safety, environmental and political risks, recreational use, and agency resources. The exception therefore barred all claims against the United States.
The court reversed as to the claims against the TVA under the TVA Act. Because the discretionary-function exception made the claims nonactionable under the SAA, the SAA did not provide a remedy whose exclusivity would foreclose another statutory basis for suit. The plaintiffs could therefore rely on the TVA Act’s sue-and-be-sued clause, which does not contain a discretionary-function exception, and pursue their claims against the TVA on remand.
Key Takeaways
- Binding Eleventh Circuit precedent treats the SAA’s sovereign-immunity waiver as subject to an implied discretionary-function exception.
- Agency decisions about marking, removing, or warning of navigational obstructions are protected when governing law leaves those decisions to agency judgment and they are susceptible to policy analysis.
- The SAA’s exclusive-remedy provision applies only when the SAA supplies an actionable remedy; it did not prevent these plaintiffs from suing the TVA under the TVA Act.
- The decision permits the claims against the TVA to proceed but does not decide their merits.
Why It Matters
The decision draws a significant distinction between admiralty claims against the United States and claims against the TVA. Although the Eleventh Circuit’s implied discretionary-function exception continues to shield the United States from SAA liability, that protection does not automatically extend to the TVA under its separate sue-and-be-sued clause.
Judge Kidd, joined by Judge Rosenbaum, separately urged en banc reconsideration of the circuit precedent importing a discretionary-function exception into the SAA, reasoning that the statute’s text contains no such exception and that Thacker weakened the precedent’s rationale.