Greg Adkisson v. Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc, 790 F.3d 641

Background

TVA operated the Kingston Fossil Plant where a coal-ash containment dike failed in December 2008, releasing large volumes of coal ash; TVA, with EPA oversight initially, led the cleanup.
Jacobs Engineering contracted with TVA in February 2009 as the prime contractor to manage planning, oversight, and safety at the remediation site and prepared a Site Wide Safety and Health Plan (SWSHP) that set minimum PPE and monitoring protocols.
Multiple workers (and some spouses) who performed cleanup work sued Jacobs for various torts (negligence, failure to warn, fraud, strict liability for ultrahazardous activity, etc.), alleging exposure to toxic fly ash and insufficient monitoring/protection.
The district court granted Jacobs’s Rule 12(b)(1) motions and dismissed the consolidated complaints, concluding Jacobs was entitled to derivative government-contractor immunity under Yearsley as a corollary to the FTCA discretionary-function exception.
The Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded, holding that Yearsley-based immunity is not jurisdictional and that the district court should have evaluated Jacobs’s defenses under Rule 12(b)(6); the court directed the district court to determine (1) whether Jacobs is eligible for Yearsley immunity and (2) whether the discretionary-function exception applies to Jacobs’s conduct.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Yearsley government-contractor immunity bars suit jurisdictionally	Plaintiffs argue Yearsley does not deprive courts of subject-matter jurisdiction and that Jacobs exceeded or violated its contractual/ statutory directives	Jacobs argues Yearsley confers derivative sovereign immunity, so the cases must be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction	Yearsley immunity is not jurisdictional; it is an affirmative defense to be adjudicated on the merits (Rule 12(b)(6) standard)
Whether Jacobs is eligible for Yearsley immunity (i.e., acted within validly conferred authority)	Plaintiffs claim allegations plausibly show Jacobs acted outside TVA’s authority or contrary to laws/regulations and thus is not protected	Jacobs contends plaintiffs do not allege it exceeded its authority or that TVA’s delegation was invalid	Court remanded for the district court to decide in the first instance under Rule 12(b)(6) whether Jacobs acted within the scope of TVA’s authority
Whether the FTCA discretionary-function exception shields Jacobs’s conduct	Plaintiffs argue some alleged acts (failure to provide PPE, concealment, specific monitoring failures) are nondiscretionary and thus not protected	Jacobs argues choices about safety response and implementation fall within discretionary judgment and thus are covered by the exception	Court instructed district court to apply the two-part discretionary-function test on remand and consider whether alleged conduct is nondiscretionary or outside the exception’s policy-protecting scope
Proper procedural standard to assess immunity/defense	Plaintiffs assert dismissal under Rule 12(b)(1) was improper and factual-material reliance outside pleadings was inappropriate	Jacobs relied on Rule 12(b)(1) and extrinsic materials to support immunity and discretionary-function arguments	Court held the defense should be evaluated under Rule 12(b)(6) (merits); because the district court considered materials outside the pleadings, remand was required for correct analysis

Key Cases Cited

Yearsley v. W. A. Ross Constr. Co., 309 U.S. 18 (contractor acting under validly conferred federal authority not liable)
Boyle v. United Techs. Corp., 487 U.S. 500 (government-contract context and displacement of state-law liability)
Filarsky v. Delia, 132 S. Ct. 1657 (private contractors can have immunity analogous to public-employee qualified immunity)
Berkovitz v. United States, 486 U.S. 531 (two-part test for discretionary-function exception)
Gaubert v. United States, 499 U.S. 315 (policy-based scope of discretionary-function exception)
Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15 (legislative history and scope of §2680(a))
In re KBR, Inc., Burn Pit Litig., 744 F.3d 326 (Yearsley/derivative immunity discussion in contractor context)
Ackerson v. Bean Dredging LLC, 589 F.3d 196 (Yearsley not necessarily jurisdictional; Yearsley applicability is a merits determination)
Bultema v. United States, 359 F.3d 379 (discretionary policy that permits negligence is not automatically protected)
Rosebush v. United States, 119 F.3d 438 (hazard-response decisions can fall within discretionary-function protection)