Wire
Morris can keep her negligence case against the government
The Fifth Circuit said a misrepresentation rule does not wipe out Brittany Morris’s claim. The case now moves forward on the question of whether federal supervision failed her after a violent attack by her ex-boyfriend.
Brittany Morris can keep suing the United States after the Fifth Circuit said a federal immunity rule does not wipe out her case. Her lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, comes out of a violent attack by her ex-boyfriend while he was on supervised release from a federal conviction.
The court said the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA, does not let the government escape this claim through the statute’s misrepresentation exception, which covers certain cases built around false statements or bad information. Here, the panel said, the heart of the dispute is not misrepresentation at all.
Why the exception failed
That mattered because the district court treated the officer’s promises as the key to the case and threw it out for lack of jurisdiction. The Fifth Circuit disagreed, saying the essence of Morris’s claim is something else: what federal supervision failed to do when the risk around her was serious.
The ruling does not decide whether Morris will win damages. It only clears one of the government’s biggest early escape routes, leaving her free to keep pursuing the case in court.