WASHINGTON - When Toi Cliatt heard a loud bang at his Atlanta home in the early hours of October 18, 2017, his first instinct was to grab the shotgun he had been storing in the closet to defend against the intruders.

Fortunately, he hesitated.

"And I was thinking, what would happen if it were law enforcement? We are dead, you know? They will make us aggressors."

His intuition is correct. It turns out that the people entering the house were FBI agents with lightning grenades and guns hanging on them.

The problem is that they raided the wrong house. Cliatt, then-girlfriend Trina Martin and her 7-year-old son Gabe Watson were totally innocent victims. About eight years later, the Supreme Court hearing was in a verbal debate on Tuesday, and the cases caused by the incident are still gradually passing through the judicial system.

Although the three people immediately complied with the agency’s requirements, the experience was painful.

"I was robbed of your home is a safe place," Trina Martin said.

Cliatt was handcuffed and threw it on the floor with a gun pointed at his head. Martin wanted to rush to her son, but was not allowed to move. Watson suddenly woke up and saw the agent of the gun in his bedroom.

"To this day, it's still in touch with me," the 14-year-old said.

From the FBI's perspective, it was a brief moment of error.

Once the agent realizes that they have gone to the wrong position, they quickly leave. Later, a supervisor returned, apologized and gave Cliart's card.

The subsequent lawsuit is now a lawsuit filed by the Supreme Court for three victims seeking damages, with Tuesday's argument focused on whether the claim could move forward.

The case highlights the problem of law enforcement attacks on wrong houses, which is not rare.

Patrick Jaicome, an attorney at the Liberal Justice Institute, who represents the plaintiff, said he has seen more examples in recent years. In fact, his group alone made two other cases in a few months, one from Texas and one from Indiana.

He added: "We have seen anecdotes...shocking false attacks and the police just went to the wrong address."

Other examples have sparked news, including a Georgia case where police raided the home of an 81-year-old man.

These incidents occur in the context of an increase in law enforcement military forces, including the use of SWAT teams, and the lack of responsibility when things go wrong.

"We know that government raids themselves are very common these days and that they are doing things in history when they knock on doors with police, waiting and talking to people," Jaicomo added.

In court documents, the Justice Department partially blamed the 2017 Atlanta raid on the Garmin GPS device used by FBI agent Lawrence Guerra to lead the team to the House of Representatives. He had previously investigated the correct house and took photos.

On the day of the raid, GPS said the agents had arrived at the right location, and Guerra "observed that he thought was the same house he had seen in the last live investigation." government lawyers wrote.

The FBI is actually seeking to arrest a man named Joseph Riley, who lives nearby. After leaving the wrong house, agents raid the right house. Riley was arrested and later convicted.

Cliatt and Martin initially sued Guerra and the federal government, but the claims against the former were dismissed and the Supreme Court did not dispute.

The case is now one of the few ways to hold federal officials accountable before the Supreme Court was involved in claims of alleged assault, assault and false imprisonment under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

District Court judges and Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the government.

The focus of the legal issue is whether a specific FTCA provision that allows actions of federal law enforcement officers (a claim that allows actions of federal law enforcement officers) is defeated by another provision called the “discretionary functional exception” which protects certain judgments from liability.

In other words, the government believes that the lawsuit cannot be carried out because Guara’s mistake is purely part of his normal duty and is decided by his own discretion. Therefore, it is a forbidden area.

Government lawyers say Guerra was left to use her own judgment without the FBI's specific guidance on how to ensure agents raid the right house.

They also said that allowing civil claims about basic law enforcement activities, such as breaking doors and using force, would threaten the ability of officials to perform their duties.

The plaintiff argued that the government's interpretation of discretionary function exceptions disengages FTCA from FTCA because it would forbid so many claims.

They say the exception applies only to administrative decisions, meaning that wrong attacks should be litigated.