Silverstein Gears Up For WTC Trial Round Two

NU Online News Service, Oct. 8, 12:44 p.m. EDT?Larry Silverstein, the scrappy, indefatigable New York property developer and leaseholder of the World Trade Center who suffered a serious defeat in phase one of the WTC insurance coverage trial in May, is getting ready to butt heads again with insurance companies.[@@]

Jury selection begins Tuesday for a second trial, and phase two proceedings will officially begin the following Monday, Oct. 18. The trial is expected to last about four-to-five weeks, according to insurers' attorneys.

At issue is how much insurers should pay for the loss of the Twin Towers based on differing interpretations of documents setting the coverage.

Of the nine insurers represented in this second round, three companies?Royal Specialty, Zurich American and Twin City?are involved in this round because in the first trial jurors found that their companies were not bound by what had been referred to as the Willis Property form.

The six new insurers entering the trial are Allianz, Industrial Risk Insurers, Travelers, Gulf, TIG, and Tokio Fire and Marine. Together, these nine insurers had provided a little less than one-third of the $3.55 billion of WTC property coverage.

In this new round, the crux of the issue is still the same: Mr. Silverstein is hoping to gain as much insurance money as possible from various insurers that provided property coverage for the WTC towers before the Sept. 11 terror attack.

His argument has been that since the Sept. 11, 2001 attack involved two separate planes crashing into two towers at distinctively different times, the event should be interpreted as two separate insured events.

The first trial verdict, however, was largely in favor of the carriers. Of the 13 insurance companies that were involved in that round, 10 companies received favorable verdicts that found they were bound by the "WilProp" form as claimed.

The form specifically defines an occurrence like Sept. 11 to be only one insurable event and thus limits insurers to only one payout. The first trial jury found 68 percent of the $3.55 billion of the WTC property coverage was a single occurrence.

In the second trial the focus will shift a little bit, since WilProp will no longer be the main point of dispute. Instead, jurors will be examining whether the Sept. 11 attack on the WTC towers should be seen as one or two events in light of each separate form used by individual insurers represented.

To read Mr. Ha's full account see the Oct. 11 print edtion of National Underwriter

Special Reports /

Silverstein Gears Up For WTC Trial Round Two

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