The Nation : U.S. Faces Antarctica Suit

A federal appeals court has ruled that relatives of 17 crew members of an Air New Zealand plane that crashed in Antarctica in 1979 may sue the U.S. government for negligence. The Justice Department said that the government may not be sued for claims arising in a foreign land. But Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey, in an opinion for the three-judge court, ruled that, because Antarctica is “sovereignless,” it should not be treated as a foreign country in the case. The 17 New Zealand crewmen were among 257 persons killed on Nov. 28, 1979, when their airliner struck Mt. Erebus. Relatives said that American air traffic controllers at the McMurdo Naval Air Station in Antarctica had not warned the pilots that the plane was nearing mountains.