Lieutenant Commander Johnson, a Coast Guard helicopter pilot stationed in Hawaii, was dispatched along with his crew, to search for a vessel in distress.

Because of inclement weather and poor visibility, Johnson "requested radar assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"), .

Johnson's widow and personal representative of his estate brought a wrongful death action against the government pursuant to the FTCA.

Rather, Justice Scalia would have declined to apply Feres to a case in which the allegedly negligent actors were civilian employees of the government.

He conceded that the limitation it sought was more a product of pragmatism than logical symmetry: "We confess that the line between FTCA suits alleging military negligence and those alleging civilian negligence has nothing to recommend it except that it would limit our clearly wrong decision in Feres and confine the unfairness and irrationality that decision has bred.

As the dissent noted, the Court itself had disavowed the reasons originally offered in Feres and substituted as the only rationale (until Johnson resurrected the other two) the after-discovered military discipline concern.