NEW YORK - A federal appeals court gave a rough reception to a lawyer's arguments the city should be immune from liability in 8,000 cases alleging it and others failed to properly protect workers cleaning up the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The lawyer, James Tyrrell, argued that laws can be read to absolve the city of responsibility for respiratory illnesses and other injuries suffered by thousands of people who cleaned up the trade center site for months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The three-judge panel repeatedly suggested it believed the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, are not entirely immune from lawsuits and questioned whether the city even had a right to appeal the issue at this stage of the litigation.
Lawyers said it appeared it could take three to four more years for the lawsuits to reach trial. The appeals court in Manhattan reserved decision after hearing nearly two hours of arguments.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Manhattan ruled that the defendants were immune for actions taken immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks but that the immunity did not extend for the entire nine months of the cleanup.
Judge Jon Newman said he believed the lawyers should try to reach a resolution in the cases because $1 billion set aside by Congress to handle claims by injured workers was not getting “to the people who need it before they die waiting for the distribution.”
Judge Richard Wesley called the majority of the claims in the cases “garden variety negligence claims for which municipalities have been sued for 70 to 90 years.”
Tyrrell urged the appeals court to find that the city, the Port Authority and contractors at the site were not liable because they were protected by a 1951 state law protecting municipalities from lawsuits for actions they take responding to attacks. He called it “a very unusual statute designed to be used very rarely when the country is attacked.”
Tyrrell said the ultimate decision of what is owed “the heroes of 9/11 is a congressional decision, not a judicial one.”
A victims' compensation fund established by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks has paid $6 billion to 2,880 families of those who died in the attacks and more than $1 billion to 2,680 injured victims.
The three-judge panel repeatedly suggested it believed the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, are not entirely immune from lawsuits and questioned whether the city even had a right to appeal the issue at this stage of the litigation.
Lawyers said it appeared it could take three to four more years for the lawsuits to reach trial. The appeals court in Manhattan reserved decision after hearing nearly two hours of arguments.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Manhattan ruled that the defendants were immune for actions taken immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks but that the immunity did not extend for the entire nine months of the cleanup.
Judge Jon Newman said he believed the lawyers should try to reach a resolution in the cases because $1 billion set aside by Congress to handle claims by injured workers was not getting “to the people who need it before they die waiting for the distribution.”
Judge Richard Wesley called the majority of the claims in the cases “garden variety negligence claims for which municipalities have been sued for 70 to 90 years.”
Tyrrell urged the appeals court to find that the city, the Port Authority and contractors at the site were not liable because they were protected by a 1951 state law protecting municipalities from lawsuits for actions they take responding to attacks. He called it “a very unusual statute designed to be used very rarely when the country is attacked.”
Tyrrell said the ultimate decision of what is owed “the heroes of 9/11 is a congressional decision, not a judicial one.”
A victims' compensation fund established by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks has paid $6 billion to 2,880 families of those who died in the attacks and more than $1 billion to 2,680 injured victims.
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