Cite as: 531 U. S. 425 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
more than one court has pointed out that, if read literally, the sentence sweeps so broadly as to make little sense.6 Moreover, the sentence was unquestionably dictum because it was not essential to our disposition of any of the issues contested in James.7 It is therefore appropriate to resort to the text of the statute, as illuminated by our holding in James, rather than to that isolated comment, to determine whether the water flowing through the Madera Canal that allegedly caused the damage to petitioner's pistachio orchards is covered by § 702c. See Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602, 627 (1935) (dicta "may be followed if sufficiently persuasive" but are not binding). See also U. S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 513 U. S. 18, 24 (1994).
In James, we held that the phrase "floods or flood waters" is not narrowly confined to those waters that a federal project is unable to control, and that it encompasses waters that are released for flood control purposes when reservoired waters are at flood stage. That holding, however, is vastly different from the Ninth Circuit's reading of § 702c, under which immunity attaches simply because the Madera Canal is part of the Friant Division of the Central Valley Project, and flood control is one of the purposes served by that project. The
to the point, such an approach is also inconsistent with the statutory language. See infra, at 434.
6 "Other circuits recognize that such a sweeping grant of immunity makes little sense in light of the text and purpose of the Act." Cantrell v. United States Dept. of Army Corps of Engineers, 89 F. 3d 268, 271 (CA6 1996). See also Fryman, 901 F. 2d, at 81 ("James was so broadly written that it cannot be applied literally").
7 In addition to concluding that the word "damage" includes personal injury and death, the Court also rejected the previously arguable propositions that the Federal Government's subsequent waiver of sovereign immunity in the Federal Tort Claims Act had impliedly repealed § 702c; and that the immunity applied only to the flood control on the Mississippi River authorized by the 1928 Act.
431
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