In the described case involving a Navy veteran, who was the defendant in the lawsuit?

• A. The federal government.
• B. The state government.
• C. The Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
• D. The private healthcare provider.

Answer: (A)

The concept here is sovereign immunity and how it is handled in federal tort cases. When a federal employee, such as a clinician at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is alleged to have caused injury through negligence, the Federal Tort Claims Act waives immunity and allows suit against the United States government for those acts. The VA facility is a federal agency, but the formal defendant in these FTCA cases is the United States itself, not a state government or a private provider. A state government would only be involved if the claim were under state law, which isn’t the case here, and a private provider would be relevant only in a non-federal setting. So the correct defendant is the federal government.