Federal Tort Claims Act
Traditionally, the federal government was immune from lawsuits by its citizens under a doctrine known as sovereign immunity. Theoretically, this immunity was justified because people would necessarily have disagreements with the government and resorting to the court system to help resolve those disputes could have resulted in a tremendous waste of time and energy. However, the situation left people with no solution when they were harmed by a person acting for the government, even if the action had nothing or little to do with the government's sovereignty. For example, under strict sovereign immunity, a person is unable to recover harms for routine torts such as slip-and-falls. Perhaps even more worrisome was the fact that, under strict sovereign immunity, people were unable to recover for intentional harms and torts inflicted by the government or government agencies, even when those harms violated federal laws. The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) was the government's solution to this problem. The FTCA does not allow all lawsuits against the government for actions by government employees, but does provide very specific scenarios where the government can be sued for tortious conduct, as well as guidelines as to the appropriate method of making a claim against various government agencies.
Overview of the FTCA
When determining whether a lawsuit is permissible under the FTCA, a potential litigant needs to review several key components because governmental liability differs from liability outside of the governmental context. For example, the idea of respondeat superior is extremely limited in claims under the FTCA: "Only federal employees can be sued under the FTCA, not independent contractors hired by the federal government (unless they are treated like employees)" (NOLA, 2013). In addition, "the negligent or wrongful conduct must have been done within the scope of the defendant's employment" (NOLA, 2013). Furthermore, the FTCA does not cover all torts. "In general, only claims of negligence -- as opposed to intentional misconduct -- are allowed (though some claims for intentional misconduct...
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Considerations Stress and grief can make it hard to reach sensible decisions." The Issue of Arbitration in Family Law Family Law frequently involves the lives of children, and includes requirements that continue after the case decision is made. It often requires ongoing contact between parties. In addition, "marital and family law takes place in this heightened emotion atmosphere that is not present in other litigation," West notes. "The Family Law Section's 'Bounds of
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S." (Liu, 2008) the actual solution to the challenges facing the health care system in the United States is one that makes a requirement of three components: implementing tort reforms; mandating the use of best practices; and driving systemic process improvement. (Liu, 2008) This report states that the threat of litigation gets in the way of health care delivery in that is "causes providers to hide problems and engage in unnecessary procedures
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