Gill v. US, No. 06-1711. This is a sad case.
Stephen Gill, an attorney, moved his family to Florida to work for the United States Navy as a civilian attorney-advisor for what he understood would be a two-year period. Instead, he was given a series of short-term jobs and extensions, starting only forty-five days into the job. The job ended in January 2003, less than a year after it began.
Anyway, he sued the Navy in District Court under the FTCA for “negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium, service, and marital society, seeking over $1 million in damages.” The Navy gave him a chance to file a claim with the “Secretary of Labor under the federal workers' compensation act, FECA [5 U.S.C. § 8145].” The Plaintiffs argue that courts – not agencies – must determine what is covered by FECA. In an act of good lawyering by the government, the government is able to convince the First that he the plaintiff would have a good chance of prevailing administratively. Applying Lockheed Aircraft Corp. v. United States, 460 U.S. 190, 193-94 (1983) and Bruni v. United States, 964 F.2d 76 (1st Cir. 1992), the court holds that FECA is the exclusive remedy that the plaintiffs have, and even the plaintiffs concede that the government has granted compensation for emotional-distress-type injuries.
FECA does have a jurisdiction-stripping provision
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