Key Points

  • The Eleventh Circuit held that the FTCA's discretionary-function exception bars all five of the plaintiffs' FTCA claims against the United States arising from the 2017 wrong-house raid, citing binding circuit precedent in Mesa v. United States and Shivers v. United States.
  • The panel reversed qualified immunity for FBI Agent Lawrence Guerra, holding that on the plaintiffs' version of the facts he failed to make reasonable efforts to identify the correct house, violating law clearly established by Hartsfield v. Lemacks (1995).
  • The court held that the plaintiffs' failure to move for spoliation-related relief did not bar the district court from drawing inferences in their favor at summary judgment from Guerra's unexplained disposal of his GPS.
  • Judge Jordan, joined by Judges Jill Pryor and Kidd, concurred to call the circuit's discretionary-function doctrine "a mess" and to urge en banc reconsideration of Shivers and possibly Mesa.

An Atlanta family whose home was stormed by an FBI SWAT team hunting a gang suspect who lived on another street cannot collect damages from the United States, a federal appeals court ruled Oct. 7, though the family may press a constitutional claim against the agent who led the raid to the wrong house.

An unsigned opinion from Eleventh Circuit Judges Jordan, Jill Pryor and Kidd affirmed summary judgment for the government on all five of the family's claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives federal immunity for some torts committed by government employees. The panel reversed the grant of qualified immunity, which shields officials from damages suits unless they violated clearly established law, to FBI Agent Lawrence Guerra.

The case returned to the Eleventh Circuit after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated its earlier ruling in Martin v. United States (2025). All three judges also joined a concurrence by Judge Jordan calling the circuit's reading of the relevant FTCA exception "a mess" and urging the full court to reconsider it.

At about 5 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2017, the SWAT team broke down the door of the home at 3756 Denville Trace, detonated a flash-bang grenade and dragged Hilliard Cliatt from a bedroom closet where he and his then-fiancee, Curtrina Martin, were hiding. Martin's 7-year-old son, G.W., was in his room across the hall. The warrant was for the residence of gang member Joseph Riley at 3741 Landau Lane, three houses away on a different street.

Guerra noticed that Cliatt lacked the face and neck tattoos visible in photographs of Riley, and Cliatt's name and address did not match the warrants. He attributed the mistake to his personal Garmin GPS unit, which he threw away shortly after the raid "and has not provided an explanation for doing so," the court wrote.

The Supreme Court held last year that the FTCA's law enforcement proviso, a 1973 amendment allowing suits over assault, false arrest and similar torts by federal officers, overrides only the act's intentional-tort exception. It sent the case back to decide whether the separate discretionary-function exception, which preserves immunity for claims based on government employees' exercise of judgment, bars the family's claims.

The panel held that it does. It said it was bound by Mesa v. United States, a 1997 circuit decision applying the exception to drug agents who arrested the wrong man with the name on a warrant, and by Shivers v. United States, a 2021 decision holding that the exception covers even unconstitutional conduct. The family had urged the panel to reconsider Shivers. "We reluctantly disagree," the panel wrote. It also rejected the family's reliance on the Collinsville, Illinois, wrong-house raids that prompted Congress to add the proviso.

Guerra's planning, including whether to conduct a site survey or drive-by, was discretionary under Mesa, the panel held, as were on-scene choices such as whether to have a team member check street signs or the mailbox, which it tied to the need for surprise. "We, as a three-judge panel, cannot contort or disregard our precedents in Shivers and in Mesa," the opinion said.

On the Bivens claim, a damages action against individual federal officers for constitutional violations, the panel viewed the evidence in the family's favor and treated Guerra as having conducted neither the site survey nor the morning drive-by he described. GPS data for the agents he said accompanied him did not place them at the target home, and he cited a black Chevrolet Camaro as a landmark although Riley's listed vehicle was a white Nissan Maxima.

The panel faulted the district court for refusing to draw inferences from the discarded GPS because the family had not moved for relief over spoliation, the destruction of evidence. "At summary judgment, however, the district court already views the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-movant," the court wrote, adding that "there are obviously inferences to be drawn from the undisputed fact that Agent Guerra led his SWAT team to the wrong house."

The court relied on Hartsfield v. Lemacks, a 1995 Eleventh Circuit decision holding it clearly established that searching the wrong residence violates the Fourth Amendment unless officers make reasonable efforts to avoid error. Guerra's conduct was worse, the panel said, because he "had access to his GPS, his cell phone's Google Maps, and text alerts providing a link to a Google Map with Mr. Riley's geolocation every fifteen minutes."

A reasonable jury, the panel held, "could fairly conclude that Agent Guerra failed to engage in reasonable efforts to avoid error, and, therefore, violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights." It added: "Such plain incompetence has clearly violated the Fourth Amendment," and had done so since at least 1995.

Concurring, Judge Jordan wrote that the circuit's discretionary-function doctrine "as interpreted bars all (or certainly most) FTCA suits based on wrong-house raids." He argued that the circuit had misread the Supreme Court's 1991 decision in United States v. Gaubert by treating the absence of a mandatory rule as dispositive, noting that "the term 'if' is not synonymous with 'unless' or 'only if.'"

Judge Jordan likened the raid to "a government driver making a wrong turn onto a one-way street." Writing on a blank slate, he said, the team's error "was just that: a heedless mistake, not a policy judgment concerning the safety, secrecy, or efficiency of the operation." He said he hoped the court would convene en banc to reexamine its discretionary-function case law, possibly including Mesa: "This case seems like a good vehicle in which to do so."

The panel affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, where the family's Fourth Amendment claim against Guerra will proceed.