Supreme Court narrows immunity

The Supreme Court ruled on April 22 that Army veteran Winston Hencely can keep suing Fluor over a 2016 suicide bombing at Bagram Airfield. (supremecourt.gov) The vote was 6-3 in *Hencely v. Fluor Corp.*, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing that Hencely’s state-law negligence claims were not blocked because the federal government “neither ordered nor authorized” the conduct he challenged. (supremecourt.gov) The case grew out of a Nov. 12, 2016 attack at Bagram in Afghanistan, where Ahmad Nayeb, an Afghan worker hired by Fluor under the military’s “Afghan First” program, detonated a bomb that killed five people and wounded 17. (supremecourt.gov) Army investigators found Fluor primarily responsible for the attack, according to the Court’s syllabus, saying the company negligently supervised Nayeb and failed to follow base procedures. Hencely suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries while stopping Nayeb before he reached a larger crowd. (supremecourt.gov) The legal fight turned on whether military contractors get the same protection the government has from combat-related lawsuits. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had said yes, holding that wartime claims tied to combat activities were preempted even when a contractor was accused of violating military instructions. (supremecourt.gov) The justices rejected that broader shield. Thomas wrote that the Federal Tort Claims Act exception for “combatant activities” preserves the government’s immunity, but the Court had already held that exception does not itself extend to federal contractors. (supremecourt.gov) That leaves a narrower rule: contractors can still argue federal law displaces state tort law when the military actually directed the conduct at issue, but not when the alleged negligence was the contractor’s own. The Court sent Hencely’s case back for further proceedings rather than deciding whether Fluor was liable. (supremecourt.gov) The ruling lands against the backdrop of the long-running *Feres* doctrine, which generally bars service members from suing the U.S. government for injuries incident to service. Hencely sued Fluor instead, in South Carolina, where two Fluor subsidiaries were based, using state negligence law. (militarytimes.com) For contractors that run logistics, maintenance and base-support work in war zones, the decision points toward more discovery fights over who made which decision and whether a company was following orders or cutting corners. For Hencely, it means the suit over the Bagram bombing is alive again nearly a decade after the attack. (washingtonpost.com)