Mass Tort Litigation Blog

On Teaching 9/11 in a Torts Class

On this 8th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I thought I would link my 2006 post on teaching 9/11 in a torts class, as well as Howard Erichson's thoughtful comment on my post.   

BGS

Cert denied in 9/11 Saudi Liability Case

The Supreme Court yesterday denied certiorari in Burnett v. Al Baraka, in which plaintiffs sought to hold Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family liable for the September 11 terrorist attacks.  The plaintiffs sought to establish liability by linking the Saudis to the financing of Al Qaeda.  The Second Circuit held that the claims were barred by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, reasoning that terrorism claims against a foreign government required a state department designation of that government as a supporter of terrorism.

Here's an excerpt from today's article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

In a decision that creates broad immunity for Saudi Arabia in terrorism lawsuits, the Supreme Court yesterday let stand lower-court rulings that the desert kingdom and senior members of the Saudi royal family are not liable for the 9/11 attacks.  ...

For the moment, the decision leaves untouched litigation against scores of Islamic charities, alleged terrorism financiers and financial institutions named as defendants in the case. But the Supreme Court's decision is a significant defeat for the 6,000 individual victims and family members along with insurers and other commercial interests seeking compensation. ...

The plaintiffs allege that Saudi Arabia funded and controlled Islamic charities that were used to launder money into al-Qaeda.  Absent that financial support, al-Qaeda never would have become a global terrorist threat and never would have been able to pull off the Sept. 11 attacks, they allege.

The Obama administration, concerned about the case's effect on U.S.-Saudi relations, weighed in with an amicus brief last month urging the Supreme Court to decline the case.

HME

Motion to Dismiss Denied In 9/11 First Responders Litigation

The motion was made by two defendants in reliance on Bell Atlantic v. Twombly.  Judge Hellerstein's denial of the motion can be found here.

9/11 Statistical Discovery

What's going on with the 9/11 "First Responder" cases these days?

I just saw the following article in NYLJ - "Plan Implemented to Resolve Complex Suits in World Trade Center Cleanup."  The special masters who are creating this plan are two eminent mass tort scholars: Aaron Twerski (formerly dean of Hofstra Law and now back on the faculty at Brooklyn) and James Henderson (on the faculty at Cornell Law).   The plan involves creating a database of all the plaintiffs, and then conducting in depth discovery of a selected number of them to get a sense of how the cases develop, with the ultimate view of either having trials or settling the cases.  Here is a description of the special masters' plan from the NYLJ article:

The plan divides the 9,090 cases into five groups, running from the first wave of cases filed to the last. The first four groups will contain 2,000 cases each. The fifth group will contain the remainder and any after-filed cases.

The special masters and counsel for both sides prepared severity charts that grade a person's condition on a scale from zero to four. They also selected six major disease categories in which to group the illnesses.

The plan kicked off on Jan. 1 and within 40 days, plaintiffs in the first group of 2,000, Group A, completed a subset of the data fields that detailed their disease rankings, duration of exposure at Ground Zero and pre-existing disorders.

Ten days later, the special masters selected from this group the 200 cases ranked most severe, 25 additional cases for diseases that are not necessarily included in the severity chart, and an additional 400 cases at random.

The database for the 200 most severe cases and the 25 additional cases will be completed by April 1. Within five days, both sides and the judge will select the first six sample cases.

Completion of the database for the 400 cases chosen at random is due in late May, after which each party will choose two more cases and the judge picks another two. Those 400 cases will proceed along on discovery only, with no schedule set for motion or trials.

I haven't seen whether the six sample cases that were to be selected in April actually were selected, but will post then I find out.  Judge Hellerstein, who is overseeing these cases, is quoted in the article as saying of the methodology: ""It allows the parties to get a good sense of the strengths and weaknesses of all the cases."

This approach shares some similarities with the bellwether trials procedure I describe in a recent article.  (See Lahav, Bellwether Trials, available on SSRN).  What is interesting about this form of statistical adjudication is that it addresses the discovery phase and illustrates the extent to which discovery really makes or breaks a litigation, rather than trial. 

ADL

Health Concerns Remain 7 Years After 9/11/2001

It's been seven years since the attacks in 9/11/2001, and health concerns remain.  Here's an excerpt from an article today from cnn.com -- 9/11 survivors troubled by asthma, PTSD, by Andrea Kane:

A commission charged with examining the scope and depth of the attack's health effects reviewed more than 100 scientific articles published since 2001 and found that new asthma levels among residents and rescue workers were two to three times higher than the national estimates.

The report by the World Trade Center Medical Working Group, issued in advance of the September 11 anniversary, also found that two to three years after the attack, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder remained elevated among rescue and recovery workers and residents of lower Manhattan.

BGS

No, the Minnesota Bridge Compensation Deal is not a Mini-9/11 Fund

Yesterday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed a $38 million settlement for victims of the I-35W bridge collapse.  Here's the AP story in USA Today.  Interestingly, state legislator Phyllis Kahn, who co-authored the compensation bill, was quoted in this article in the Minnesota Daily as saying that the bill was modeled after the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, including the waiver of the right to sue the state.  For reasons I explained on Monday, the Minnesota compensation deal is better understood as an ordinary mass tort settlement rather than as an extraordinary government compensation package like the September 11 Fund.  There's an enormous difference between the government's using taxpayers' money to settle potential claims against that government (the Minnesota deal) and the government's using taxpayers' money to settle potential claims against others (the 9/11 Fund, which used federal government funds but required participants to release whatever claims they may have had against the airlines or Port Authority).  The former might occur anytime a government defendant faces mass tort claims.  That's why the Minnesota package makes me glad as long as both the claimants and the state are satisfied with its terms. The latter, however, can rarely be justified.  This is the point that special master Ken Feinberg made powerfully in his final report on the Victim Compensation Fund: the 9/11 situation and the government's generous response to it should be viewed as sui generis.  That strikes me as exactly right, which is why it makes me nervous to hear the 9/11 Fund invoked as a model for something that in fact is quite different and much less problematic.

HME

Compensation Deal for Minnesota Bridge Collapse Victims

The Minnesota state legislature appears on the verge of approving a $38 million compensation package to settle the claims of victims of the 2007 collapse of the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, according to this AP story on law.com (via Point of Law):

Minnesota lawmakers reached agreement on a $38 million compensation package for victims of a deadly bridge collapse, culminating months of work to provide relief beyond the state's legal liability.  The deal struck in a joint committee of the House and Senate will offer everyone who was on the bridge up to $400,000, with an additional $12.6 million pool for the people who suffered the most severe injuries and losses. Thirteen people died in the Aug. 1 collapse and 145 were hurt. ...

The package is expected to be approved by the Legislature on Monday and sent off to Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who called it "needed relief and support" for victims.

If victims agreed to take the money, they would have to sign away their rights to sue the state and other governmental entities in Minnesota. They would not be precluded from suing other parties in the collapse. ...

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the collapse. Officials have focused on a design flaw involving gussets, the plates that help connect steel beams, and the weight of construction materials at vulnerable points in the bridge. Victim lawsuits are on hold until a final determination is made.

As a legislative decision to compensate disaster victims, the package bears a passing resemblance to the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.  It is better understood, however, as an ordinary mass tort settlement, in which a defendant (the state) offers to settle plaintiffs' claims against it.  Unlike the 9/11 Fund, which used government funds but required participants to release their claims against the airlines and other private parties, the Minnesota deal apparently requires only the release of claims against the state, just like any other settlement offer by a defendant.

HME

Special Compensation for Victims of Terrorist Attacks?

Robert Rabin (Stanford Law) and Stephen Sugarman (Boalt Hall) have just posted an intriguing article entitled "The Case for Specially Compensating the Victims of Terrorist Attacks: An Assessment" on SSRN. The paper was published in the Hofstra Law Review in 2007.  The abstract explains:

In light of the daunting prospect of terrorists striking again on the home front, what special measures, if any, should be taken to assure compensation to those killed or injured by such violence? The starting point for any discussion of the compensation of these victims (and their survivors), we believe, is an appreciation of the baseline arrangements our nation has in place for those killed or seriously injured regardless of cause. One policy option would be to leave victims of terrorism to whatever they might obtain from these baseline tort and social welfare compensation systems in default of special treatment. On what basis, if any, should terrorist victims be singled out for different treatment? Is there something about being victims of terrorism that should entitle them and their survivors to be better treated than they would be by Social Security, victims of violent crimes schemes, and the like? Is there something about tort law's application, or non-application to the terrorist setting, that makes a special compensation scheme appropriate for victims of terrorism?

In addressing these questions, there are two basic alternatives to the default solution. One would involve the creation, ex ante, of an ongoing victim compensation fund in anticipation of the occurrence of future terrorist acts. The other would involve the ad hoc creation of a fund established after the occurrence of a terrorist event to provide retrospective compensation to victims. Israel and Northern Ireland are examples of countries with longstanding experience with terrorism, which have adopted legislative schemes of the first sort. In the U.S., the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund is an example of the ad hoc retrospective approach.

We begin by commenting on the 9/11 Fund itself, setting it in the context of other American compensation schemes that arose out of concerns about the appropriateness of having injury victims seek compensation through tort law. Next, we consider, in turn, the ex ante and ex post options for addressing the claims of terrorist victims. Finally, we return to the default systems mentioned above, raising the question of whether they offer in all, or most, circumstances the most sensible approach to dealing with future incidents of personal injury from terrorist acts.

ADL

No Immunity for NYC in 9/11 Claims

BNA Law Week reports that on March 26 the Second Circuit held that New York City and its contractors are not automatically entitled to derivative Stafford Act immunity for state law claims brought by various persons (police, firefighters, etc.) who helped clean up the site of the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001.  In re World Trade Center Disaster Site Litigation, 2d Cir., No. 06-5324-cv, 3/26/08.  The opinion is available here, on the Second Circuit website.  

A quote from the opinion:

"Separation of powers animates discretionary function immunity; this doctrine does not permit us to extend limitless derivative immunity to ensure that, in the event of another attack, contractors are willing to assist in disaster recovery efforts. We are confined to the parameters of the derivative defense. Nonetheless, we observe that private contractors, unlike volunteers or conscripts, are paid for their services and able to pass along the cost of liability protection to the government, either by including the cost of liability insurance in their contract or by seeking indemnification from the government."

ADL

Hadfield on the September 11 Fund and Litigation

Gillian Hadfield (USC) has posted what promises to be a fascinating qualitative analysis on the decision of victims of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 to litigate or obtain compensation through the September 11 Fund.  The Article, called "Framing the Choice Between Cash and Courthouse: Experiences with the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund" will be published in the Law and Society Review and is posted on SSRN.  This is a very important contribution to our thinking on what types of procedures ought to be used in mass tort cases.  Here is the abstract:

In this paper I report the results of a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of how those who were injured or lost a family member in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks evaluated the tradeoff between a cash payment - available through the Victim Compensation Fund - and the pursuit of litigation. Responses make it clear that potential plaintiffs saw much more at stake than monetary compensation and that the choice to forego litigation required the sacrifice of important non-monetary, civic, values: obtaining and publicizing information about what happened, prompting public findings of accountability for those responsible, and participating in the process of ensuring that there would be responsive change to what was learned about how the attacks and deaths happened. The results shed light on the framing component of the transformation of disputes, and in particular on how potential litigants see the decision to sue, or not, as a decision as much or more about how they understand their relationship to their community and their responsibilities as a citizen as how they evaluate monetary considerations.

ADL

New York's City Medical Examiner Says Detective's Death From Drugs, Not 9/11 Dust

Article in the L.A. Times -- Drugs, not 9/11 dust, cited in cop's death, from Newsday.  Here's an excerpt:

The death of New York police Det. James Zadroga, which was previously linked to his work in the rubble of the World Trade Center, was caused by injections of ground-up pills, the city medical examiner's office said Thursday.

"What caused the disease was the injection of the drugs into his bloodstream, as opposed to something he breathed," said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch.

The ruling outraged the family of Zadroga, 34, who became a symbol of post-Sept. 11 illness after his death last year.

The conclusion contradicted a previous pathologist's report that said Zadroga's death was the result of his work after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

One wonders about bias, given that New York is being sued by many workers for 9/11 ailments, and the city medical examiner is employed by New York.  Additionally, it's possible that any drug abuse was related to 9/11 ailments, as Detective Zadroga was taking as many as 14 medications for his health problems, as the articles notes.

BGS

NY Medical Examiner Rejects 9/11 Dust as Cause of Publicized Policeman's Death

Article on cnn.com -- Medical examiner rules 9/11 cop did not die from WTC exposure.  Here's an excerpt:

He became the face of post-September 11 illness after his death in early 2006, galvanizing lawmakers and health care advocates to lobby for research and treatment for thousands who breathed the debris-filled air at ground zero.

James Zadroga, the 34-year-old retired police detective who died of respiratory failure after working hundreds of hours at the World Trade Center site, was often cited by those advocates as a "sentinel case" -- the first health-related casualty linked to ground zero, suggesting there would be more to follow.

The city's medical examiner stunned that community this week with a letter declaring that Zadroga's death had nothing to do with the toxic air he breathed while working at ground zero.

Rejecting another medical examiner's autopsy, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch said in a letter to Zadroga's family that his death was not caused by exposure to trade center dust.

"It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son's lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere," said the letter to Zadroga's father. It was signed by Hirsch and another medical examiner, Michele Slone. The letter was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

The article also notes that "[t]he city is defending itself in a lawsuit filed by thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected from the dust."

BGS

Blog Roundup

Drug and Device Law Blog has posts on Tort Reform Works in Texas; Notes from the Scientific Underground; Preemption Scorecards; The Vanishing Trial; and Riegel Survives.

Food Law Prof Blog has posts on Cargill meat recall based on e.coli; Bush signs FDA Amendments Act of 2007; More on the Recall Process; CRS Report on Recall Authority; Roberts on Role of Regulation in Minimizing; Thinking About Recalls; and  Yet another meat recall -- this one enough for one picnic.

Point of Law has posts on Refik Kozic v. Merck; Absurd RI lead abatement plan developed; 
"Defendants See a Case of Diagnosing for Dollars"; and Zyprexa protective order enforcement VI: Egilman settlement.

Torts Prof Blog has posts on Topps Meat Recall: Let the Filing Begin; 9/11 Opt-Outers Settle; Lead Everywhere; Stent Safety and Patents;  USSC Denies Cert In Engle (Tobacco) Case; FDA Warns Against Use of Cold Meds by Toddlers; and Sebok's Part II on NJ Supreme Court's Vioxx Ruling.

BGS

14 September 11th Suits Settle

The New York Times (by Anemonia Hartocollis) reports today that 14 September 11th suits have settled.  This leaves only 21 of the 96 lawsuits originally filed arising out of the tragedy.  Judge Hellerstein had scheduled the first case of the bellwether trials on damages for next Monday.  Now that these cases are settled, the next one is not scheduled to go to trial until November 5.  You can access the orders on the SDNY website. The article provides some insight into the decision to sue, litigate and/or settle:

Settlement talks continue, and more settlements could result before the first trial ever takes place, Mr. Migliori said. But he said he expected that some families would refuse to settle and insist on a trial because they felt strongly that only a trial would bring the answers they wanted about how terrorists had bypassed security and managed to hijack four planes.

Although the court has barred parties to the settlements from talking about them or revealing how much money they received, Mr. Migliori said they felt vindicated by their decision to forgo the compensation fund.

“I think it’s fair to say that the folks that chose litigation knew they were going to get compensated whether they went into litigation or went into the fund,” he said. “But uniformly it was understood and appreciated that the fund was not going to provide the same level of compensation as litigation.”

According to the article, the settlements came in the wake of Judge Hellerstein's ruling that the cockpit recording from Flight 93 could be played to the jury.  This must have raised the stakes for defendants enough that they decided to offer a settlement plaintiffs could agree to.  In other words, Judge Hellerstein's tactics to encourage settlement by pushing cases to trial - even just a trial on damages - worked.   The discussion on this blog about the motives of the plaintiffs - truth or compensation - is answered somewhat by this article.  It would be interesting to do a mathematical analysis of the ultimate payout received by these plaintiffs to compare it to what they would have received from the fund.  I wonder why the Judge ordered the amounts be kept confidential, and whether there is a time limit on that order.  Perhaps its because the order gives the parties 30 days to reinstate the actions.

McFarland and Garner on terrorism tort claims

Robert McFarland and Donald Garner of Faulkner University have posted a paper on SSRN suggesting that American law supports viable tort claims against Saudi Arabia for certain terrorist acts.  The paper -- Suing Islam: Tort, Terrorism and the House of Saud -- is forthcoming in the Oklahoma Law Review.  Here's the abstract:

This paper examines the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's vital role in propogating Wahhabism, a peculiarly intolerant form of Islam justifying violent jihad, and argues that Saudi Arabia is liable for the resulting harm.

The Kingdom's role in creating terrorism is a subject of great national concern. The need for reform in Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist religious establishment is frequently discussed in the Congress. This paper argues that the federal judiciary, in addition to Congress, has a vital role to play, not only in generating compensation for terrorism victims, but also in winning the ideological war on terrorism. 9/11 and other contined manifestations of terrorist jihad are causally intertwined with the Sunni Wahhabism practiced and promoted by Saudi Arabia. Upon that understanding we build our tort theories and upon that understanding America can more thoughtfully defend itself in the ideological war on terror.

Part I discusses Saudi Arabia's historic and continued committment to Wahhabism. Part II argues that American tort law supports two viable causes of action against the Kingdom for harm inflicted by Wahhabi jihadists: (1) negligent incitement of terrorism; and (2) special relationship liability. Finally, in Part III, the question of Saudi Arabia's sovereign immunity is discussed with special attention given to the analysis of Saudi Arabia's immunity in the 9/11 litigation.

HME

September 11 Lawsuits Heading to Trial

Today's New York Times contains a front-page article about the 9/11 tort litigation, offering an interesting description of the plaintiffs as well as news about upcoming trials before Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the 9/11 litigation is the self-selected nature of the plaintiff group.  Each of these plaintiffs, in contrast to the vast majority of 9/11 victims' families, declined the compensation offered by the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.  By passing up guaranteed and generous compensation and electing to sue defendants such as American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing, and airline security companies, these plaintiffs demonstrated an uncommonly strong desire to impose accountability through a public process.

The nature of these plaintiffs -- reporter Anemona Hartocollis calls them an "angry, stubborn, sorrowful and stalwart group" -- makes the court's procedural choice about the upcoming trials particularly surprising.  Judge Hellerstein has set a first trial date of Sept. 24, and the Times describes the trial process as follows:

In a reversal of the usual legal procedure, Judge Hellerstein has ordered six trials for damages to take place before any trial for liability, in the hope, he said, that both sides may use those figures as a road map toward settlement.

In other words, the court plans to conduct bellwether trials using reverse bifurcation.  It is not uncommon in mass torts for judges to use bellwether trials to provide the parties sufficient information about likely outcomes to enable settlement.  Nor is reverse bifurcation rare in mass torts.  "Reverse bifurcation" refers to phased trials in which damages are tried before liability.  They have proved useful in asbestos litigation where liability was not seriously contested and where verdicts on individual damages could produce settlements.  Reverse bifurcation also was used in the Prempro litigation.

I have to wonder, however, whether either bellwether trials or reverse bifurcation makes sense for lawsuits involving the September 11 tragedy.  If these plaintiffs were looking for compensation, the Victim Compensation Fund offered a more appealing option than litigation with its risks, costs, and delays.  Although the Times article emphasizes that many of these plaintiffs would have received awards at the lower end of the fund's payout scale, the fund nonetheless offered guaranteed payments in sharp contrast with the uncertainties of litigation.  Those who opted for litigation presumably are seeking something more.  If they are seeking their day in court, the majority of the plaintiffs may be left unsatisfied by bellwether trials that allow only the bellwether plaintiffs to tell their stories in a public forum.  Moreover, even the bellwether plaintiffs may be unsatisfied by a reverse-bifurcated phased trial process that allows them to describe their own grief but gives them no opportunity to hold the defendants accountable.  If I am correct about what distinguishes these plaintiffs from the vast majority of the victims' families, then Judge Hellerstein may find that phased bellwether trials -- often effective devices for encouraging mass tort settlements -- do less to promote settlement in the uncommon context of the 9/11 litigation.

HME

Assessing the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund

Article in the ABA Journal -- Accounting for Lives: The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Worked.  But What About Next Time?, by Jill Schachner Chanen and Margaret Graham Tebo.  The ABA is also hosting a teleconference -- Compensation Funds: Are They Enough?, on September 19.  Here's an excerpt from the article:

Mari-Rae Sopper thought she was embarking on a new stage in her life when she boarded American Airlines Flight 77 the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, at Washington Dulles International Airport. Sopper had decided to leave behind her law practice in Washington, D.C., and return to gymnastics, the passion of her youth. After the flight reached Los Angeles, Sopper would go to her new job as head coach of the women’s gymnastics team at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Sopper never made it to that new life. Instead, she and everyone else on Flight 77 died when terrorists took over the plane and crashed it into the Pentagon.

Sopper’s griefstruck parents wanted answers. Her mother, Marion Kminek of Cape Coral, Fla., says her initial inclination was to file a lawsuit in efforts to get them. But after consulting with two leading plaintiffs lawyers in Chicago, Kminek says, she decided to heed their advice that she avoid the frustration and delays of litigation and seek compensation, if not resolution, through the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Congress created the fund to handle claims by victims of the terrorist attacks as part of leg­islation providing relief to the airline industry.

Going through the fund didn’t give Kminek all the answers she was looking for, but it did give her some measure of closure through a relatively simple administrative process that resulted in a compensation payment after a relatively short time. But after going through the process, Kminek knows she will never get the information she really wanted about the events that led to her daughter’s death, and she wonders what would have happened if victims and their families had banded together and sued the airlines and government bodies.

“The lawsuits serve a purpose in that you don’t get changes made or the discovery done without them,” Kminek says. “Look at the tobacco lawsuits. If that was not done, I don’t think a lot of that information would be out there. None of us were doing this for the money. We were doing it for the discovery. But none of us will get the answers.”

BGS

Feinberg to Dispense Virginia Tech Shooting Fund

Article in the New York Times -- Lawyer Who Directed Sept. 11 Compensation to Oversee Virginia Tech Program, by Ian Urbina.  Here's an excerpt:

Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who directed the federal program to compensate relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will oversee the distribution of the $7 million that has been donated to Virginia Tech after the April campus massacre, university officials said Thursday.

“There is no script for a tragedy of this magnitude and depth of pain,” the university’s president, Charles Steger, said. “I am very pleased to have someone of Ken Feinberg’s caliber, experience and long career to help guide us.”

In November 2001, Mr. Feinberg was appointed special master of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. A former chief of staff for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Mr. Feinberg has extensive experience in mediating complicated compensation disputes, including those that arose over the Agent Orange defoliant used in the Vietnam War and the Dalkon Shield birth control device.

While Mr. Feinberg’s job will involve the difficult responsibility of assigning monetary values to human lives, he said his current task would be much smaller and less complicated than his work on the Sept. 11 case.

BGS

NYT Review of Post-9/11 Lack of Safety for Rescue Workers

Article in the New York Times -- Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy, by Anthony DePalma.  Here's an excerpt:

Anyone who watched Rudolph W. Giuliani preside over ground zero in the days after 9/11 glimpsed elements of his strength: decisiveness, determination, self-confidence.

Those qualities were also on display over the months he directed the cleanup of the collapsed World Trade Center. But today, with evidence that thousands of people who worked at ground zero have become sick, many regard Mr. Giuliani’s triumph of leadership as having come with a human cost.

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

BGS

Blog Roundup

Point of Law's Walter Olson has a post criticizing the upcoming Roger Williams conference on Genuine Tort Reform as only representing pro-plaintiff perspectives.

Point of Law's Ted Frank has a post on Vioxx class actions.

Civil Procedure Prof's Jeremy Counseller has a post with more links on E-Discovery.

Products Liability Prof's Michael Steenson has a post on assessing damages on pet deaths from recent pet-food poisonings.

As noted by Torts Prof Blog's William Childs, Anthony Sebok has posted on Findlaw the second part of his article examining the expansion of the 9/11 fund.

BGS