Posted on 03/28/2008 12:40:44 PM PDT by BGHater
Larry A. Silverstein, who has won nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments to cover his losses and help him rebuild at the World Trade Center site, is seeking $12.3 billion in damages from airlines and airport security companies for the 9/11 attack.
Mr. Silverstein, the developer of ground zero, sought the damages, whose amount was not previously known, in a claim filed in 2004, that says the airlines and airport security companies failed to prevent terrorists from hijacking the planes used to destroy the buildings.
His case was consolidated last week with similar, earlier lawsuits brought by families of some victims of the attack and by other property owners. But in seeking $12.3 billion, he is by far the biggest claimant in the litigation.
The size of Mr. Silverstein’s claim was revealed last week at a status conference on the litigation in United States District Court in Manhattan.
The claims by the parties involved total about $23 billion, and Mr. Silverstein’s claim for such a large chunk could jeopardize claims from other businesses and property owners, according to defense lawyers. A lawyer for the victims’ families, Donald Migliori, said he was confident that their claims would not be affected because they would take priority over the property claims.
A lawyer for the airlines, Desmond Barry, said that if Mr. Silverstein won his claim, he could push the total claims beyond the amount of insurance that the airlines and security companies have available. “There ain’t that much insurance,” Mr. Barry said.
The federal government has capped the liability at the amount of available insurance, to avoid bankrupting the airlines. The exact amount of insurance available is still being explored in the court proceedings.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I don’t see how the airlines could be held responsible, but that sure is a scary amount of money at stake.
Should I be the first?
BAILOUT! FEDERAL BAILOUT!
;-)
Maybe the fed could give him a $100 billion low interest loan.
Oh God, the Truthers and controlled demolition crowd are going to have a field day with this one.
He ought sue the Saudis, who funded the groups and mosques that agitated for this, and for the fact that the majority of the terrorists that day were Saudi citizens. Might not get far, but it might get the Saudis more interested in what is actually being taught in those madrassas and mosques they are so generously supporting.
It was the atmosphere of political correctness that permitted the jihadi scum to board the planes in Boston.
Flags were raised when they bought their tickets one-way with cash. But the manager at the booth told the ticket agent to give them a pass.
They were allowed to board.
It was a politically correct decision based on airline and TSB political correctness policy, based in turn on the fear of lawsuits brought by the advocates of political correctness.
If the Airlines and TSB lose, and they well might, they should turn around and sue the ACLU and the political correctnes thugs in the universities that made us so vulnerable.
As an aside,
What ever happened to the Islamo-filth that got booted off the airplane and sued the airlines and the TSB for throwing them out?
The lawsuit should have been dismissed out of hand without argument, but I don’t really know what happened.
By Joseph Farah
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com
The country is united politically right now, so I'm sure I'll be accused of divisiveness, partisan sniping, maybe even being unpatriotic by raising this issue.
But, heck, I've been accused of worse. Last week the Wall Street Journal called me a "purveyor of obscenity." I'll let you be the judge of whether that description suits me.
I never let those criticisms bother me – especially not from uptight, corporate media establishment mouthpieces and spoiled, little, ivory-tower reactionaries.
So, today I'm going to tell you how Al Gore may have contributed, in his own politically ambitious, selfish way, to the deaths of some of the victims of the terrorist attacks Sept. 11.
Following the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, Gore was entrusted by President Clinton to investigate airline safety. He was named chairman of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety.
The Gore commission produced what most observers considered to be a tough preliminary report unveiled Sept. 9 of that year – one that included tough counter-terrorism procedures.
But within days, according to an insider on the commission, the airline industry jumped all over Gore. As a result, 10 days later, Gore sent a letter to airline lobbyist Carol Hallett promising that the commission's findings would not result in any loss of revenue.
In what can only be seen as a pure political payoff, the Democratic National Committee received $40,000 from TWA the next day. Within two weeks, Northwest, United and American Airlines ponied up another $55,000 for the 1996 campaign.
But the money trail didn't stop there. In the next two months leading up to the November elections, American Airlines donated $250,000 to the Democrats. United donated $100,000 to the DNC. Northwestern put $53,000 more into the kitty.
Following the election, in January, Gore floated a draft final report that eliminated all security measures from the commission's findings, according to the insider. Two commission members balked, as did CIA Director John Deutch.
Fearing more political heat, Gore pulled back the draft report. A month later, the final report was issued – one that included requirements that would cost the airlines some money, but, perhaps, save some lives in the future.
The report's requirements included:
Only one thing was lacking from the report, said the whistleblower – there was no deadline by which those requirements would have to be met. It was open-ended. In other words, it wasn't worth the paper on which it was written.
In a meeting with other commission members Feb. 12, 1997, Gore said he would leave room for a dissent by those who opposed the report. But within minutes, Gore was announcing to the president and the public that the report was the work of a unanimous commission. In other words, he lied – again.
In Washington, that might have been the end of the story. Scandals like this often go unnoticed. But one courageous lady, the dissenting member of the commission, Victoria Cummock, filed suit to gain access to files she was denied and for the right to file her dissent.
Who is Mrs. Cummock? She was appointed to the commission by Clinton because her husband was killed in the terrorist downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland. She's the insider. She's the whistleblower. She's the heroine of this story.
All this was chronicled in a Tony Blankley column a year ago – a year and five days before the latest terrorist attack that killed all passengers and all the crew on four airliners as well as thousands on the ground at the World Trade Center and Pentagon Sept. 11.
Would any of that death and destruction have been prevented had Gore not crawled into bed with the airline industry thinking only in the short term about potential financial losses, not realizing it might be saving itself from much bigger losses in the future?
I guess we'll never know for sure. But remember this story the next time Al Gore rears his opportunistic political head on the national scene.
Interesting article . . . .
Maybe because the 'security companies' they hired to 'screen' passengers waived 12 armed terrorists through their 'checkpoints' without so much as a hiccup.
Just a thought.
L
9-11 changed all that, of course.
Wrong. Look into Operation Bojinka
The airlines knew or should have known what was coming.
L
Ping
L
“Larry A. Silverstein, who has won nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments to cover his losses and help him rebuild at the World Trade Center site, is seeking $12.3 billion in damages from airlines and airport security companies for the 9/11 attack. “
Silverstein ... the spitting image of unrestrained greed.
Have you ever seen worse?
This is a ridiculous lawsuit. Sue the Arab world that spawned the cretins that attacked us.
But the money trail didn't stop there. In the next two months leading up to the November elections, American Airlines donated $250,000 to the Democrats. United donated $100,000 to the DNC. Northwestern put $53,000 more into the kitty.
Also remember that Democrat Senate Leader Tom Daschle's wife was the lobbyist for Northwest Airlines and I believe a few other airlines as well.
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