But that kind of defense for contractors just about never works and it didn’t work for the storyline. (Turns out the contractor had entered the military minutes before the sexual assault. Wonder how often that happens?) Anyway, the Congressional Research Service put it this way in April 2001, report:
The Feres doctrine currently does not bar suits against government contractors working for the military, although some contractors have argued that it should be extended to preclude such suits, and some commentators have asserted that the Feres doctrine leads service members to seek damages from contractors that they could not recover from the government. Contractors have also attempted to assert derivative Feres or “intramilitary” immunity, although with little success. Where a party is immune from suit, the court cannot exercise jurisdiction over the claim against it.
Contractors indeed are doing some horrible things to U.S. soldiers, with the Pentagon often picking up the tab. Coincidently, last Friday, a jury in Portland Oregon ordered contractor KBR “to pay $85 million after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen Oregon soldiers who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war.” Writes AP:
The suit was the first concerning soldiers’ exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq. The soldiers said they suffer from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate, and they fear that a carcinogen the toxin contains, hexavalent chromium, could cause cancer later in life.
Rocky Bixby, the soldier whose name appeared on the suit, said the verdict should reflect a punishment for the company’s neglect of U.S. soldiers.
“This was about showing that they cannot get away with treating soldiers like that,” Bixby said. “It should show them what they did was wrong, prove what they did was wrong and punish them for what they did.”
Each soldier received $850,000 in non-economic damages and $6.25 million in punitive damages.
Another suit from Oregon Guardsmen is on hold while the Portland trial plays out. There are also suits pending in Texas involving soldiers from Texas, Indiana and West Virginia.
KBR’s appealing. Meanwhile, here’s the full episode of "The Good Wife."
Let me tell you from personal experience that Feres protects EVERYTHING!
While I was on active duty with the US Army, I was threatened by a US Army lawyer named Captain Matthew Fitzgerald to do something which was contrary to the US Army legal regulations (which I did not know at the time but he did). Fitzgerald’s motive was to tout this as his first accomplishment on his annual performance report of which I later got a copy. This threat resulted in my losing over $50,000 of my personal funds.
When I asked the top lawyer (now Lieutenant General Dana Chipman) for assistance, the first thing they did was appoint Fitzgerald’s previous boss and a very obvious friend to “investigate.” Since there was no wrongdoing found as a result of this faux investigation but specifics were protected by the Privacy Act , I filed the same complaint with Fitzgerald’s Oregon State Bar which is NOT PROTECTED under privacy laws. Evidence showed that Fitzgerald lied no less than 10 times to his Oregon State Bar.
It was all thrown out of federal court due to Feres although I had a slam-dunk case with all evidence in my favor. In fact, I was never even able to get into court and present my case. The judge simply had his law clerks cut-and-paste a previous reply to a previous case. Just to add insult to my financial injury, Fitzgerald got promoted to Major. Feres was NEVER designed 60 years ago to protect against torts, corruption, misdeeds, and cover-ups by US Army lawyers. Today it protects against EVERYTHING.
Posted by: Jeffrey Ziegler | November 06, 2012 at 02:55 AM