Bolduc v. US, No. 03-2081, holds that District Courts lack jurisdiction under the FTCA for what amounts to a case of mistaken identity resulting in the plaintiffs spending eight years in prison. (Don’t worry, they were not members of the elite.) Although the District Court reached the merits on a “negligence” and “negligent supervision” claim under the FTCA, the First Circuit held that it really lacked jurisdiction. The FTCA is weird. 28 U.S.C. § 2674 provides that the United States only "shall be liable . . . in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances...” which essentially means that if there would have been a state law claim against a private party for the same conduct, the District Courts have jurisdiction. Otherwise, they don’t.
In fact, “...the federal government does not yield its immunity with
respect to obligations that are
peculiar to governments or
official-capacity state actors and which have no private counterpart in
state law. See Franco de Jerez v. Burgos, 947 F.2d 527, 528 (1st Cir. 1991)”
So, in this case, state statutes require that the police disclose exculpatory evidence, this duty doesn’t extend to private parties. Therefore, under the FTCA, the government, not being a private party, could not be negligent. With no duty, there is no jurisdiction under the FTCA. The court then explore Wisconsin common law on the issue, and found that there was no such duty that emerged from the common law.
The negligent supervision claim also failed for want of jurisdiction because the plaintiffs did not produce any law which showed that a failure to reign in an incompetent FBI agent gave rise, under any “law, regulation or policy” that would require them to respond in a certain way.
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