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Ruling bars lawsuit in Iraq fuel convoy injury

ATLANTA — The wife of a soldier incapacitated by a brain injury in a wreck during a fuel convoy in Iraq cannot sue the civilian contractor delivering the fuel, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Sgt. Keith Carmichael was a gunner assigned to ride in a tanker truck operated by Kellogg, Brown & Root during the 2004 convoy. He was thrown and pinned beneath the truck when the civilian driver failed to negotiate a curve.

According to court documents, Carmichael was left in a permanent vegetative state.

Annette Carmichael of Atlanta sued KBR on behalf of her husband, along with its former parent company, Halliburton, and the driver in Georgia state court in 2006.

KBR had the lawsuit moved to U.S. District Court in Atlanta, then sought for it to be dismissed on grounds that the military was in charge of handling the convoy, including security details and choosing the route to take from Balad, north of Baghdad, to a U.S. air base 100 miles west of the Iraqi capital.

Judge Timothy C. Batten found that the lawsuit could not be adjudicated because it raised a political question involving the military role in the convoy. Batten dismissed the lawsuit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

Carmichael appealed, saying the civilian contractor, not the military, was responsible for the accident.

In Tuesday’s 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it found “no judicially manageable standards” to settle the suit and upheld Batten’s dismissal. The opinion said the suit was barred by “the political question doctrine.”

“After thorough review, we conclude that adjudicating the plaintiff’s claims would require extensive re-examination and second-guessing of many sensitive judgments surrounding the conduct of a military convoy in war time — including its timing, size, configurations, speed and force protection,” said the opinion written by Judge Stanley Marcus and joined by Judge R. Lanier Anderson.

Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch concurred that the military controlled the convoy but said Carmichael “sufficiently alleged a claim of negligent supervision” by requiring the driver to work unreasonably long hours, causing fatigue. Kravitch said she would return the case to the lower court to gather more facts on that question.