214
Stevens, J., dissenting
IV
Petitioner's action was filed "in the judicial district where the plaintiff resides," as § 1402(b) authorizes; there is, therefore, no objection to venue in this case. Because that provision would not provide a forum for a comparable action brought by a nonresident alien, the statute contains an omission that is no stranger to our law. In our opinion in Brunette Machine Works, Ltd. v. Kockum Industries, Inc., 406 U. S. 706, 710, n. 8 (1972), we identified examples of "cases in which the federal courts have jurisdiction but there is no district in which venue is proper" and stated that "in construing venue statutes it is reasonable to prefer the construction that avoids leaving such a gap." (Emphasis added.) Neither in that case nor in any other did we suggest that a venue gap should be avoided by adopting a narrow construction of either a jurisdictional grant or the scope of a federal cause of action. Yet that is the Court's perverse solution to the narrow venue gap in the FTCA.
Because a hypothetical handful of nonresident aliens may have no forum in which to seek relief for torts committed by federal agents in outer space or in Antarctica, the Court decides that the scope of the remedy itself should be narrowly construed. This anomalous conclusion surely derives no support whatsoever from the basic decision to include aliens as well as citizens within the protection of the statute, particularly since the overwhelming majority of aliens who may have occasion to invoke the FTCA are surely residents. As Judge Fletcher accurately observed in her dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals:
"Those who have no problem with venue should not be foreclosed from bringing suit simply because others cannot, particularly with respect to a statute such as the FTCA the primary purpose of which, as we have seen, was to expand the jurisdiction of the federal courts." 953 F. 2d 1116, 1122 (CA9 1991).
Page: Index Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007