On April 16, 1947, in the Port of Texas City, Texas, at Galveston Bay, a mid-morning fire started on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp (docked in the port) and detonated her cargo of about 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate intended for fertilizer. This started a chain reaction of fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department.
More than 5,000 people were injured, over 500 homes were destroyed and hundreds damaged, and some 2,000 were left homeless. The seaport was destroyed, and many businesses were flattened or burned. Over 1,100 vehicles were damaged and 362 freight cars were obliterated; the property damage was estimated at $100 million (equivalent to $1.2 billion in 2020).
The disaster drew the first class action lawsuit against the United States government on behalf of 8,485 plaintiffs, under the recently enacted 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).
On April 13, 1950, a Texas District Court found the United States responsible for a litany of negligent acts of omission and commission by 168 named agencies and their representatives, in the manufacture, packaging, and labeling of ammonium nitrate. This was further compounded by errors in transport, storage, loading, fire prevention, and fire suppression, all of which led to the explosions and the subsequent carnage.
On June 10, 1952, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned this decision (197 F.2d 771), finding that the claim did not meet the requirements of the FTCA, stating that “This Act does not subject the Government to a previously unrecognized type of obligation.” It noted:
The Act does not apply to “any claim * * * based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused.” Sec. 2680(a). This is a “highly important exception”. H. Report 1287, 79th Cong., 1st Session, 1945, pp. 5 & 6. As Judge Woodrough, speaking for the Eighth Circuit, pointed out in Coates v. United States, 181 F.2d 816, 817, 818, 19 A.L.R.2d 840, “the term `discretionary function or duty’ has a long history of precise meaning in a legal sense”. It was meant “to continue to exclude judicial authority from interference with lawful legislative and executive action”. See also 56 Yale Law Journal, p. 545.”
The Supreme Court granted certiorari “because the case presented an important problem of federal statutory interpretation.” In Dalehite et al. v. United States (346 U.S. 15, June 8, 1953), a 4-3 opinion, it accepted the Circuit Court’s reasoning.
Justice Stanley Forman Reed, writing for the Court, observed that no individual acts of negligence could be shown. And the legislative history of the FTCA indicated that while Congress desired to waive the Government’s immunity from actions for injuries to person and property occasioned by the tortious conduct of its agents acting within their scope of business, it was not contemplated that the Government should be subject to liability arising from acts of a governmental nature or function.
Section 2680(a), Justice Reed averred based on the legislative history, was intended to preclude any possibility that the bill might be construed to authorize suit for damages against the Government growing out of authorized activity, such as a flood control or irrigation project, where no negligence on the part of any government agent is shown, and the only ground for the suit is the contention that the same conduct by a private individual would be tortious.
Justice Stanley Forman Reed
The Court noted that the District Court had no jurisdiction under the federal statute to find the U.S. government liable for “negligent planning decisions” which were properly delegated to various departments and agencies. That is, the FTCA clearly exempts “failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty,” and the Court found that all of the alleged acts in this case were discretionary in nature:
Petitioners rely on the word ‘wrongful’ though as showing that something in addition to negligence is covered. This argument, as we have pointed out, does not override the fact that the Act does require some brand of misfeasance or nonfeasance, and so could not extend to liability without fault; in addition, the legislative history of the word indicates clearly that it was not added to the jurisdictional grant with any overtones of the absolute liability theory. Rather, Committee discussion indicates that it had a much narrower inspiration: ‘trespasses’ which might not be considered strictly negligent. Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on S. 2690, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., 43—44. Had an absolute liability theory been intended to have been injected into the Act, much more suitable models could have been found. . . .
In short, the Court concluded, the alleged ‘negligence’ does not subject the Government to liability. The decisions implicated in subsequent disastrous events were all responsibly made at a planning rather than operational level and involved considerations more or less important to the practicability of the Government’s fertilizer program. The Court affirmed the Circuit Court’s findings.
The Dalehite decision was eventually “appealed” to Congress, where relief was granted by means of legislation (Public Law 378, 69 Stat. 707, 1955). When the last claim had been processed in 1957, 1,394 awards totaling nearly $17 million had been made.
Legal Legacy 
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