Three children suffered physical and emotional abuse by two employees at the Child Development Center West, a government-owned daycare on an Air Force base in Georgia. The parents sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging the government was negligent in failing to protect the children and report the abuse. The district court dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, ruling that the claims were barred by the FTCA's intentional tort exception because the injuries arose from the employees' assault and battery. The district court also denied the parents' motion to amend their complaint, deeming it futile. The parents appealed, arguing their claims were based on an independent duty to care for the children that existed regardless of the abusers' employment status.
The Eleventh Circuit analyzed whether the FTCA's intentional tort exception, which preserves sovereign immunity for claims arising out of assault or battery, applied to the parents' negligence claims. The court distinguished the Supreme Court's decision in Sheridan v. United States, which held that the exception does not bar claims where the government negligently allows an assault to occur, provided the negligence is independent of the tortfeasor's employment status. The court found that the government voluntarily assumed an affirmative duty to care for and protect the children under Georgia law and the Air Force Child Development Center Criteria. This duty to supervise the children and ensure their safety was independent of the employment relationship between the abusers and the government. Unlike the precedent in Alvarez v. United States, where the negligence was rooted in the supervision of the employee-tortfeasor, here the negligence was the failure to supervise the children and uphold the center's safety standards. The court reasoned that the government's liability arose from its failure to protect the children, not from the fact that the abusers were government employees. Consequently, the claims fell outside the scope of the intentional tort exception. The court also addressed the motion to amend, concluding that since the claims were not barred by sovereign immunity, the district court erred in denying the amendment as futile.
The case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings. The government's sovereign immunity defense based on the intentional tort exception is removed, allowing the parents' negligence claims to proceed. The district court must now evaluate the amended complaint to determine if it states a valid claim for relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), an issue the appellate court declined to address for the first time on appeal.