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Exploring The Foreign Country Exception: Federal Tort Claims In Antarctica, David J. Bederman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

On November 28, 1979, an Air New Zealand DC-10 aircraft carrying tourists bound for an expedition to Antarctica crashed into the side of Mount Erebus, the highest peak on the frozen continent. All aboard perished. Four years later, the families of some of the New Zealander skilled in the accident brought suit against the United States Government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). They claimed that the negligence of the air traffic controllers at the United States scientific base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, was the proximate cause of the crash.

This Article considers numerous aspects of this litigation and …