## Facts

- Two minor children, by their mother, sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act for the wrongful death of their father, William Voss.
- The claim alleged negligent psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, supervision, and control of William Giles, a VA patient, and a failure to protect or warn foreseeable third parties.
- Giles, a veteran, was voluntarily admitted to a VA hospital after threatening to blow up a VFW hall.
- A VA physician made tentative psychiatric diagnoses and placed Giles in an open ward where doors were normally unlocked.
- Psychological testing suggested paranoid schizophrenia but did not conclusively show Giles was dangerous to himself or others.
- Giles twice left the hospital without authorization; after the first incident he returned voluntarily, and staff decided to keep him in the open ward with closer observation.
- After the second departure, Giles encountered Voss, who saw Giles carrying and pointing a .22 caliber rifle.
- A passenger in Voss’s car suggested notifying nearby police, but Voss instead stopped, approached Giles, and verbally confronted him.
- Giles shot and killed Voss; the case was tried to the court without a jury.

## Issues

1. Whether VA hospital staff breached the applicable standard of psychiatric care by placing Giles in an open ward, not initiating involuntary commitment, failing to prevent his unauthorized departures, or failing to warn/protect third parties.
2. Whether any such breach was a proximate cause of Voss’s death given Giles’s intervening criminal act.
3. Whether Voss’s conduct constituted contributory negligence under Missouri law that barred recovery.

## Decision

- Judgment was entered for the United States.
- The court found no negligence by the VA in diagnosis, treatment, supervision, open-ward placement, or the decision not to seek judicial commitment.
- The court also held that, even if the VA had been negligent, Voss was contributorily negligent in confronting an armed stranger when safer alternatives (including contacting police) were available, which independently barred recovery under Missouri’s contributory-negligence rule.

## Legal Principles

- Under the FTCA, liability depends on whether government employees, applying the relevant state-law standard, exercised reasonable care consistent with the skill and learning ordinarily possessed by similar professionals in comparable communities.
- Psychiatric decision-making is evaluated as professional judgment; providers are not insurers against later violence and are not required to make infallible predictions of dangerousness.
- Open-ward placement and decisions not to pursue involuntary commitment are not negligent where supported by accepted practice and where dangerousness is not clearly established.
- A third party’s criminal act may defeat causation unless the harm is sufficiently foreseeable from the defendant’s alleged negligence.
- Under traditional Missouri contributory negligence, a decedent’s failure to use ordinary care for personal safety that proximately contributes to the injury bars wrongful-death recovery.

## Conclusion

The court rejected the FTCA wrongful-death claim because the VA’s psychiatric care decisions fell within reasonable professional standards and, in any event, the decedent’s decision to confront an armed individual—rather than seek police assistance—constituted contributory negligence that barred recovery.


Voss v. United States, 423 F. Supp. 751 (E.D. Mo. 1976)