CINCINNATI — Three appellate court judges in Cincinnati ruled Thursday that lawsuits filed by the victims of the deadly 2016 Gatlinburg wildfires can continue.
After the wildfires, several victims sued the federal government, blaming National Park Service employees for failing to warn the public adequately about the fire's threat.
Senior U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer ruled in February 2022 that plaintiffs in a half-dozen or so lawsuits against the United States had failed to fully state the basis of their claims on a routine piece of paper—what's called an SF-95—as required under federal law.
Greer, who presides in Greeneville, tossed the cases because of what amounted to a procedural flaw. The victims started under the weight of a long-held legal assumption: It's tough to sue the federal government and win.
Before filing suit, the victims filed in early 2017 claim notices called an SF-95 form. Many used the same language.
As their basis of claim, they stated on the form: "The U.S. government through its employees failed to follow mandatory regulations to monitor and extinguish a fire in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, thereby allowing it to spread beyond the park boundaries onto claimants' private property, destroying their property."
The victims specifically didn't come out and say, as they alleged in lawsuits, that National Park Service employees had inadequately warned the public at large about a huge fire in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in November 2016 that was bearing down on Gatlinburg and other parts of Sevier County, the judge found.
By Greer's reading, the language in their SF-95 forms means the victims allege the NPS is at fault for failing to put the fire out while it was still burning in the Smokies, "rather than a failure-to-warn claim." The failure-to-warn claim is a key part of their legal argument in the lawsuits.
The appellate court disagreed with Greer, arguing he mistakenly dismissed the lawsuits.
"Our sister circuits’ decisions are consistent with this Court’s precedent that an administrative claim need not articulate a precise cause of action in order to satisfy the presentment requirement," Judge Helene White wrote in her opinion, pointing to similar cases in the past involving the federal government. "And here, the SF95s clearly contain “written notice of the incident” that Plaintiffs allege gave rise to their harms—the NPS’s alleged failure to deal effectively with the Fire, from the moment it was first spotted until the time it exploded beyond the park five days later. This too supports the Plaintiff’s contention that they’ve met their notice obligations."
The other two judges, Eric L. Clay and Amul Thapar, largely concurred with White's opinion.
"That SF-95 form unquestionably provides written notice of the incident: the Fire; the government’s failure to follow mandatory regulations; and the injuries that followed," Clay said in his opinion.
Lawyers for hundreds of 2016 wildfire victims can continue moving forward with the lawsuits. They are seeking millions from the U.S. government.