## Facts

- A plane crashed into Massachusetts Bay, placing the pilot and other occupants in distress at sea.
- Representatives of the decedents and injured occupants sought damages from the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), alleging Coast Guard negligence in failing to rescue.
- In related civil actions against private parties, a defendant obtained an order permitting a third-party complaint against the United States for contribution or indemnity based on the same alleged Coast Guard non-rescue.
- The United States moved to dismiss the FTCA action for lack of jurisdiction and to vacate the order permitting the third-party complaint.
- The court treated the dispositive question as whether a legally enforceable tort duty to rescue existed, rather than the detailed timeline of the response.

## Issues

1. Whether the United States can be liable under the FTCA for the Coast Guard’s alleged negligent failure to rescue individuals in distress at sea, based on statutes charging the Coast Guard with saving life and property at sea.
2. Whether a third-party complaint for contribution or indemnity against the United States may proceed in related actions when the alleged governmental fault is the same asserted failure to rescue.

## Decision

- The court granted the United States’ motion to dismiss the FTCA action for lack of a cognizable tort claim.
- The court held that Coast Guard statutes describing a mission to save life and property at sea did not create a private right to damages for negligent non-rescue.
- The court rejected liability premised on a general duty to rescue, applying the common-law rule that nonfeasance alone ordinarily creates no tort duty absent a special basis for duty.
- The court concluded the pleadings did not fit within an “undertaking” theory because the Coast Guard was not alleged to have worsened the victims’ position or prevented others from rendering aid.
- The court vacated the earlier order allowing the third-party complaint against the United States in the related actions because the proposed impleader rested on the same non-existent underlying liability.

## Legal Principles

- Under the FTCA, the United States is liable only to the extent a private person would be liable under the law of the place where the act or omission occurred; the FTCA does not create new substantive duties.
- At common law, a person generally has no tort duty to rescue another in peril absent a special relationship, a statutory duty creating civil liability, or an undertaking that triggers a duty of due care in performance.
- Statutes describing an agency’s public mission, without clear language creating private remedial rights, do not by themselves establish a tort duty enforceable in a damages action.
- Liability for negligent rescue may arise when a rescuer undertakes aid and then, through lack of due care, worsens the victim’s position or displaces other potential aid; mere failure to act is insufficient.
- Contribution or indemnity claims against a third party require underlying substantive liability; impleader cannot stand where the proposed third-party defendant owes no tort duty to the plaintiff.

## Conclusion

The court dismissed the FTCA claim because the Coast Guard’s statutory mission did not create a privately enforceable duty to rescue, and the allegations did not support liability based on negligent performance of an undertaken rescue; it also vacated the order permitting third-party impleader of the United States in related cases predicated on the same theory.


Lacey v. United States, 98 F. Supp. 219 (D. Mass. 1951)