User:Paris1127/Smith v. United States (volume 507)

Smith v. United States, 507 U.S. 197 (1993), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that, even though it has no government, Antarctica is for all intents and purposes a foreign country, and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) does not apply.

Background
John Emmett Smith worked as a carpenter (under contract with the National Science Foundation) at McMurdo Station, a United States research center on Antarctica's Ross Island (part of the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency). While out on a hike, Smith and two others attempted to cross a snow field to Scott Base, a New Zealand research facility. Stopping for a snack, one man suddenly vanished. When Smith followed, he too disappeared, falling into a crevasse, where he would die of exposure.

Smith's widow, Sandra Jean Smith, sued the United States in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon (where she and for her late husband lived) for wrongful death under the Federal Tort Claims Act, arguing that the US had been negligent by not warning those in the Antarctic of the dangers of hidden crevasses. Judge Helen Jackson Frye dismissed the lawsuit per FRCP (b)(1) and 12(h)(3), holding that Antarctica was a foreign country per the FTCA and as a result the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, causing a circuit split.

The differing appellate court case, Beattie v. United States, also concerned Antarctica. On November 28, 1979, Air New Zealand Flight 901 crashed into Antarctica's Mount Erebus, killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board. The plaintiff, a relative of one of the deceased, sued in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, which ruled that a suit could be brought, but