OPINION
GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff-appellant Shirley A. Eaglin appeals the dismissal of her Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671 et seq., suit against the United States Army for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the claim arose in a foreign country. We affirm.
Facts and Proceedings Below
In January of 1982, Shirley Eaglin was a civilian dependent living on a United States Army base located in West Germany. Around January 7 of that year, Eaglin was
Eaglin filed the instant claim in district court on May 7, 1984, and she alleged that the government negligently failed to inform her in the United States about the weather and climactic hazards she would face in West Germany, and negligently failed to instruct her in methods to discover or avoid any of these climactic hazards. Eaglin claimed in her petition that as a lifelong resident of Louisiana she was not aware of the hazards of "black ice" and that she should have been briefed on these hazards before she left the United States.
On October 15, 1985, the government moved to dismiss Eaglin's suit under, inter alia, Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, or, alternatively, under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56 for summary judgment. The district court granted the government's motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on November 4, 1985, and judgment was entered. Eaglin appeals.
Discussion
The sole issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in dismissing Eaglin's suit under the FTCA for want of subject matter jurisdiction. We note that the FTCA is a limited waiver of the United States government's sovereign immunity in tort. Section 1346(b) of the FTCA provides, in relevant part:
However, section 2680(k) of the FTCA specifically exempts from the section 1346(b) waiver of sovereign immunity "[a]ny claim arising in a foreign country." For the purpose of determining FTCA jurisdiction under section 2680(k), a "foreign country" is a "territory subject to the sovereignty of another nation." United States v. Spelar, 338 U.S. 217, 70 S.Ct. 10, 11, 94 L.Ed. 3 (1949). In Spelar, the Supreme Court stated, "[T]hough Congress was ready to lay aside a great portion of the sovereign's ancient and unquestioned immunity from suit, it was unwilling to subject the United States to liabilities depending upon the laws of a foreign power." Id. 70 S.Ct. at 12. Consequently, with respect to negligence actions arising in a foreign country, the United States retains its sovereign immunity and no court has subject matter jurisdiction under the FTCA. 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k).
Eaglin urges, however, that a "headquarters claim" exception exists in the section 2680(k) jurisprudence under which the place of the accident or injury is not controlling for jurisdictional purposes. She asserts that jurisdiction is proper under the FTCA if a negligent "act or omission" occurred in the United States,
It is unnecessary in the present case to determine whether this Court should recognize a "headquarters claim" exception,
Unlike the above-cited cases, however, here there is no plausible proximate relationship between the alleged negligence in this case and the resulting damage in a foreign country. In her petition to the district court, Eaglin alleged, inter alia:
"8.
As the district court held, these rather general allegations of negligence simply do not
First, we note that here, unlike the situation in Sami, there was no negligent act performed in the United States that directly caused an injury in a foreign country. Nor is Eaglin's plight similar to that of the plaintiff in Leaf, where the damaged property was leased under false pretenses in the United States, any supervision of the alleged agent would have been in the United States, and the alleged undercover operation was launched from the United States. Here, accepting for the moment Eaglin's rendition of the facts, there was a simple slip and fall accident on black ice in West Germany, an action in our view not proximately related to any precedent wrong in the United States. Additionally, the warnings and instructions sought by Eaglin would not require extensive or professional training at a school or other educational base, as was the case in Beattie, and we cannot qualitatively equate air traffic control instruction with warnings about walking on ice in the streets or sidewalks of West Germany. If black ice is peculiar to, or common in, West Germany, then the obvious place to warn the servicemen and their dependents of this danger is in West Germany, not in Louisiana. Neither common knowledge nor any of Eaglin's allegations support an inference that warnings about black ice should have been given in the United States. Further, Eaglin did not claim that she was misadvised or mistrained. Nor did she allege that she was treated differently in any way from other civilian dependents. Instead, Eaglin simply made broad allegations of negligence about the Army's deficient training procedures for civilian dependents. We conclude that these allegations are insufficient to establish a "headquarters" claim when the relationship between the negligence in the United States and the foreign country where the injury or damage occurred is so strained and attenuated. Thus we hold that were we to adopt a "headquarters" exception to section 2680(k) for the foreign nation results of negligent training or supervision conducted in the United States, the district court would nevertheless not have jurisdiction to hear Eaglin's claim because the nexus between her claim and any act or omission in the United States is simply too tenuous and remote.
Conclusion
Having determined that Eaglin's claim arose in a foreign country as defined in section 2680(k) of the FTCA, we affirm the district court's dismissal of her action for want of subject matter jurisdiction.
AFFIRMED.
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