61 Opinion of the Court. then moved to dismiss on the ground that it had not consented to be sued "in the manner in which this suit is brought" in that petitioners' only relief was under the Suits in Admiralty Act, 41 Stat. 525, or the Public Vessels Act, 43 Stat. 1112. This motion was granted and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed per curiam. 211 F. 2d 886. Because the case presented an important aspect of the still undetermined extent of the Government's liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act, we granted certiorari, 348 U. S. 810. The judgment of the Court of Appeals was affirmed by an equally divided Court, 349 U. S. 902, but a petition for rehearing was granted, the earlier judgment in this Court vacated, and the case restored to the docket for reargument before the full Bench. 349 U. S. 926. The relevant provisions of the Federal Tort Claims Act are 28 U. S. C. §§ 1346 (b), 2674, and 2680 (a): § 1346 (b). ". . . the district courts . . . shall have exclusive jurisdiction of civil actions on claims against the United States, for money damages, accruing on and after January 1, 1945, for injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government while acting within the scope of his office or employment, under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred." § 2674. "The United States shall be liable. . in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances, but shall not be liable for interest prior to judgment or for punitive damages." Opinion of the Court. 350 U.S. § 2680. "The provisions of this chapter and section 1346 (b) of this title shall not apply to "(a) Any claim based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government, exercising due care, in the execution of a statute or regulation, whether or not such statute or regulation be valid, or based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused." The question is one of liability for negligence at what this Court has characterized the "operational level" of governmental activity. Dalehite v. United States, 346 U. S. 15, 42. The Government concedes that the exception of § 2680 relieving from liability for negligent “exercise of judgment" (which is the way the Government paraphrases a "discretionary function" in § 2680 (a)) is not involved here, and it does not deny that the Federal Tort Claims Act does provide for liability in some situations on the "operational level" of its activity. But the Government contends that the language of § 2674 (and the implications of § 2680) imposing liability "in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances . . ." must be read as excluding liability in the performance of activities which private persons do not perform. Thus, there would be no liability for negligent performance of "uniquely governmental functions." The Government reads the statute as if it imposed liability to the same extent as would be imposed on a private individual "under the same circumstances." But the statutory language is "under like circumstances," and it is hornbook tort law that one who undertakes to warn the public of danger and thereby 61 Opinion of the Court. induces reliance must perform his "good Samaritan" task in a careful manner. Furthermore, the Government in effect reads the statute as imposing liability in the same manner as if it were a municipal corporation and not as if it were a private person, and it would thus push the courts into the "non-governmental"-"governmental" quagmire that has long plagued the law of municipal corporations. A comparative study of the cases in the fortyeight States will disclose an irreconcilable conflict. More than that, the decisions in each of the States are disharmonious and disclose the inevitable chaos when courts try to apply a rule of law that is inherently unsound. The fact of the matter is that the theory whereby municipalities are made amenable to liability is an endeavor, however awkward and contradictory, to escape from the basic historical doctrine of sovereign immunity. The Federal Tort Claims Act cuts the ground from under that doctrine; it is not self-defeating by covertly embedding the casuistries of municipal liability for torts.1 1 1 A good illustration of the effort of a conscientious court to reconcile the irreconcilable is Haley v. City of Boston, 191 Mass. 291, 77 N. E. 888. For an example of the confusion prevailing in one jurisdiction, compare District of Columbia v. Woodbury, 136 U. S. 450 (municipal corporation liable for injuries caused by negligent failure. to keep sidewalk in repair) with Harris v. District of Columbia, 256 U. S. 650 (municipal corporation not liable for injuries caused by negligent sprinkling of streets). But even in the law of municipal corporation and state liability, one State at least has sought to emerge from the quagmire. See the more recent New York cases: Foley v. State of New York, 294 N. Y. 275, 62 N. E. 2d 69 (State liable when negligent failure to replaced burned-out bulb in traffic light caused accident); Bernardine v. City of New York, 294 N. Y. 361, 62 N. E. 2d 604 (city liable in negligence action for damages caused by runaway police horse). When the confused law of municipal corporations is applied to the Tort Claims Act, the same unsatisfactory results occur. Compare the holding of the Court of Opinion of the Court. 350 U.S. While the Government disavows a blanket exemption from liability for all official conduct furthering the "uniquely governmental" activity in any way, it does claim that there can be no recovery based on the negligent performance of the activity itself, the so-called "end-objective" of the particular governmental activity. Let us suppose that the Chief Petty Officer going in a Coast Guard car to inspect the light on Chandeleur Island first negligently ran over a pedestrian; later, while he was inspecting the light, he negligently tripped over a wire and injured someone else; he then forgot to inspect an outside connection and that night the patently defective connection broke and the light failed, causing a ship to go aground and its cargo of triple super phosphate to get wet; finally the Chief Petty Officer on his way out of the lighthouse touched a key to an uninsulated wire to see that it was carrying current, and the spark he produced caused a fire which sank a nearby barge carrying triple super phosphate. Under the Government's theory, some of these acts of negligence would be actionable, and some would not. But is there a rational ground, one that would carry conviction to minds not in the grip of technical obscurities, why there should be any difference in result? The acts were different in time and place but all were done in furtherance of the officer's task of inspecting the lighthouse and in furtherance of the Coast Guard's task in operating a light on Chandeleur Island. Moreover, if the United States were to permit the operation of private lighthouses-not at all inconceivable-the Government's basis of differentiation would be gone and the negligence charged in this case would be actionable. Yet there would be no change in the character of the Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the instant case, 211 F. 2d 886, with its holding in United States v. Lawter, 219 F. 2d 559 (United States liable under Tort Claims Act for negligence of Coast Guard during helicopter rescue operation). 61 Opinion of the Court. Government's activity in the places where it operated a lighthouse, and we would be attributing bizarre motives to Congress were we to hold that it was predicating liability on such a completely fortuitous circumstance the presence or absence of identical private activity.2 While the area of liability is circumscribed by certain provisions of the Federal Tort Claims Act, see 28 U. S. C. § 2680, all Government activity is inescapably "uniquely governmental" in that it is performed by the Government. In a case in which the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, a wholly Government-owned enterprise, was sought to be held liable on a crop-insurance policy on the theory that a private insurance company would be liable in the same situation, this Court stated: "Government is not partly public or partly private, depending upon the gov 2 Although the argument is more elaborately presented here, this is not the first statute which the Government has attempted to construe in this manner. The Suits in Admiralty Act, 41 Stat. 525, provided that a libel in personam could be brought against the United States for damage caused by a Government-owned merchant vessel or tug in cases "where if such vessel were privately owned or operated .. a proceeding in admiralty could be maintained . . ." and stated that "such suits shall proceed and shall be heard and determined according to the principles of law and to the rules of practice obtaining in like cases between private parties." In Eastern Transportation Co. v. United States, 272 U. S. 675, an action was brought under the Act to recover damages for the loss of a ship and cargo by collision with an unmarked wreck of a sunken Government-owned merchant vessel. The Government moved to dismiss the action on the ground, inter alia, that "The said alleged cause of action set out in the said libel relates to an alleged failure on the part of the officers and/or agents of the United States to perform a purely governmental function or to alleged negligence of such officers and/or agents in the performance of a purely governmental function; and gives rise to no liability on the part of the United States of America for which they are suable in the United States Court or elsewhere." The motion to dismiss was granted on another ground but on appeal the Supreme Court rejected all arguments that the district court lacked jurisdiction and reversed the judgment of the district court. |