The Feres Doctrine was conceived as the result of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Feres v United States in 1950. The case involved the executor of Feres who charged that the US was negligent in housing a soldier in a barrack who had a defective heating system that was widely known to be unsafe. The said soldier then died when his barracks caught fire due to the defective heating system. The US Supreme Court decided that the federal government could not be held liable under the statute known as the Federal Tort Claims Act. The said statute allows people intentionally or negligently wronged by a government employee while on active duty to sue the government for their injuries. Claims against the federal government by members of the armed forces for injuries arising from …show more content…
This allows soldiers who are further harmed due to incompetent or reckless medical care to have no recourse at all. The lack of repercussions to unprofessional medical care had led to a substandard military medical system where malpractice rate are significantly higher than compared to civilian medical care systems. Doctors should be sued in cases such as these, but at the same time vicarious liability should apply as well. The rationale behind this is that the state should accept responsibility for their employees because employers have huge control over employees, employers should also accept liability for hiring a negligent employee since they derive service from the employers. Most importantly, the state is in a better position to compensate victims because of their huge access of funds. This is especially important to deter the state from being complicit in their employees negligence by ensuring that the state as an employer would make sure that employees will not be careless. Joining the