Case Citator › Feres v. United States

Feres v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Criticized by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
340 U.S. 135
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
66 of 66
Citing cases (total)
66
Treatment dates
1980
Criticized by some courts
At least one reviewed court has criticized this case’s reasoning. No reviewed court has overruled it. Feres v. United States remains controlling for Federal Tort Claims Act injuries incident to military service, although the Fifth Circuit criticized its basis. The Fifth Circuit applied the rule even as it faulted the judicially inferred exception.
More on how this was screened

All 66 flagged citations have been read. The confirmed treatment is listed below. Two citing opinions reproduce the same Parker v. United States ruling; it is listed once. The retrieved Franklin Federal Savings Bank opinion contains no citation to Feres and yielded no treatment.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

66 later cases cite Feres v. United States; 66 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Feres v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Criticized

  • The Fifth Circuit faulted the judicial creation of Feres's exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act while continuing to apply its incident to service rule.

    Parker v. United States · Fifth Circuit · filed

    No section specifically excludes all actions by members of the military. Nevertheless, the courts rushed in where legislators feared to tread. In a series of decisions now referred to as the Feres doctrine, the United States Supreme Court implied an exception to the FTCA and held that no action lies for injury to a member of the armed forces whose activity at the time of injury is "incident to military service." United States v. Brown, 348 U.S. 110, 75 S.Ct. 141, 99 L.Ed. 139 (1954); Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 71 S.Ct. 153, 95 L.Ed. 152 (1950); Brooks v. United States, 337 U.S. 49, 51-54, 69 S.Ct. 918, 93 L.Ed. 1200 (1948).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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