Miree v. DeKalb County
United States Supreme Court
433 U.S. 25 (1977)
After a jet crash near DeKalb County's (defendant) airport, survivors of deceased passengers (plaintiffs) sued DeKalb as third-party beneficiaries of DeKalb's contract with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to keep nearby land free of things incompatible with airport operations, alleging DeKalb breached that contract by maintaining a garbage dump next to the airport whose swarming birds caused the crash. The district court applied Georgia law and dismissed the complaint; the Fifth Circuit affirmed but instead applied federal law, holding the survivors lacked standing to sue. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether federal law must apply to a third-party-beneficiary breach-of-contract claim, where one of the parties to the contract is the United States government.