Cope v. Scott
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
45 F.3d 445 (D.C. Cir. 1995)
John Cope (plaintiff) was injured when another driver's vehicle slid on a rain-slicked, worn section of an NPS-maintained scenic road that, though designed for pleasure driving, was regularly used by commuters and had been identified in an engineering study as a high-accident area falling below acceptable skid-resistance standards, though improvements were not a high NPS priority; Cope sued the NPS (defendant) for negligent road maintenance and inadequate warning signage, and the district court granted the NPS summary judgment based on the FTCA's discretionary-function exception.
Whether, to be exempt from suit under the discretionary-function exception of the Federal Tort Claims Act, a governmental agency or employee's action or inaction must directly implicate political, social, or economic policy choices.