The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages for pain and suffering and economic loss. Some are asking for medical monitoring; others are considering punitive damages, as well.
The defendants contend that a link between the plaintiffs' illnesses and their exposure at Ground Zero cannot be proven. They also contend that some of the plaintiffs' claims are fraudulent.
The cases, which involve some 90 different defendant entities, have drawn the attention of hundreds of lawyers and yielded millions of pages of legal documents. If the cases go to trial, jurors will be faced with determining the culpability of these public and private organizations against a group of very sympathetic plaintiffs, primarily firefighters, police officers, construction workers, and other first-responders.
Sample Cases Chosen
Given their complexity, the cases have been consolidated (however, they are still being considered separately; they have not been combined into a class-action lawsuit). Rather, the parties and the court have selected a group of sample cases to bring to trial. These initial 12 cases are scheduled to go to trial May 16 in Manhattan.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is overseeing the litigation, recently announced that a detailed settlement plan some 70 pages long has been drafted. He told The New York Times that, "The parties are looking toward possible group settlements, while others may still be settled individually."
Legal experts appear not to be surprised that a settlement is looming. Most have voiced the opinion that the cases would never go to trial. Now it is just a matter of what price will be paid to resolve the issue short of a trial.
Changing the Rules
New York City also is reaching out to the U.S. Congress for help in resolving the situation by supporting a bill to reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Under the original terms of the federal fund, rescue workers who developed symptoms after the filing deadline or who were not working at Ground Zero within four days of the attack were excluded.
In an address to Congress in March 2009, Michael A. Cardozo, corporation counsel of the City of New York, asked members to "re-open the Victim Compensation Fund, thereby providing a fast, fair, and efficient way to compensate the Ground Zero workers and area residents who demonstrate that they were injured as a result of the terrorist attack." Speaking in support of H.R. 847, Cardozo stated that the bill "would broaden the existing limitation on liability for damages arising from the response to the terrorist attack... ." He noted that according to the present parameters of the fund, "...to be eligible for the fund, a claimant had to have been present at Ground Zero within four days of the attack. And claims had to be filed by December 2003. Because of these limitations, there are now many rescue and recovery workers, not to mention those in the community, who report injuries, but have no option for compensation other than litigation. Almost 11,000 of those people have sued New York City and/or its contractors. Most of them say they did not develop symptoms of their injury until long after the filing period for the original VCF passed. Also, a number of them were not present at Ground Zero within four days of the attack and were therefore not eligible for compensation from the fund."
The bill is currently assigned to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Discharged. Its companion bill in the Senate, S.1334, has been read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
