Posted on 11/11/2001 11:36:51 AM PST by NYCVirago
The salesman was running late that morning. He called his wife to say he was probably going to miss his meeting at Windows on the World.
But at the last minute, at 8:47, he called his office to say he had made it to the restaurant.
One minute later, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the building, the north tower of the World Trade Center. It was 100 minutes before the tower collapsed.
He was 29.
The other day, a lawyer for the salesman's 27-year-old widow pushed back in his chair at a Park Avenue law firm and estimated how much the dead man's final suffering high over Manhattan might be worth one day in court. In another case a few years ago, he said, a jury awarded $365,000 to the survivors of a passenger who experienced five minutes of terror as a damaged plane careened to earth.
"You're talking about many minutes," the lawyer, James P. Kreindler, said matter-of-factly. "It should be a large award." Maybe $1 million, he said, for the salesman's final anguish.
Such calculations are being considered by hundreds of lawyers as they measure the potential value of cases of those who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in the four hijacked planes.
The lawyers are asking uncomfortable questions. How much did the dead man make? Was the death fast or slow? Were the passengers terrorized by seeing flight attendants stabbed? How hot was the fire?
For centuries, civil lawsuits have tried to answer such questions in dispassionate economic terms. The main goal of a wrongful death suit is to replace financial support to the dependents of a person whose death was the result of an intentional act or negligence.
In measuring the value of a lost life, lawyers often say that dollars are inadequate, but that they are all there is. In addition to damages for economic losses, intangible things, like the suffering before an inescapable death, are given a price tag. Lawyers say they are struggling to analyze how such intangibles should be computed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Kreindler described the calculations in the salesman's case on the condition that the dead man, newly married and expecting his first child, not be identified.
Some of the victims are likely to file suits against the airlines and others. Most are expected to file claims for compensation under the fund set up by Congress.
Either way, lawyers say their calculations based on similar cases in the past are likely to be influential. Mr. Kreindler and an associate, Justin T. Green, said they might try to hire engineers and other experts to reconstruct what those minutes in Windows on the World must have been like.
They might analyze how quickly the fire might have climbed. They might use investigators to track down witnesses who saw people jumping from the building to show the desperation of the trapped people.
"We want to know exactly what happened in the restaurant," Mr. Green said.
Proving pain and suffering is always a delicate task, Mr. Kreindler said. Jurors or other decision makers must be told enough, but not so much as to feel manipulated. "You want to leave something to their imagination," Mr. Kreindler said.
Other lawyers said the pain and suffering claims based on Sept. 11 present unusual challenges, particularly for applications under the government fund. Many questions about the fund remain unanswered, including what evidence might be accepted.
Some lawyers say the chaos and the vast range of terror experienced by so many people at the trade center make it difficult to assemble the details of many people's final minutes. Jeffrey A. Lichtman, a lawyer who is handling cases involving deaths there, said people on some floors, like those where the planes hit, are presumed to have died instantly, which would mean the law would not recognize any suffering to compensate.
But people on other floors lived for differing amounts of time and in a range of conditions. Rather than force claimants to prove each pain and suffering case, Mr. Lichtman said, "I will be making the argument that there should be a presumption based upon where you were."
But some cases, lawyers say, will include detailed accounts. Michel F. Baumeister, a lawyer who is representing clients who lost family members at the trade center and on several of the planes, said cellphone calls will help prove the psychological suffering of those who knew that death was coming.
In one case, Mr. Baumeister said, a co-worker will testify to seeing the man trapped in the trade center as others were escaping. The man also called his wife and said he understood his fate.
It is unclear whether there will be opposing lawyers in the cases filed for compensation under the fund. But some lawyers say hearing officers may be as skeptical of pain and suffering claims as defense lawyers.
In an air crash case a few years ago a lawyer representing the airline took issue with a claim seeking damages for the suffering of two passengers. The families of the dead men argued that their loved ones must have suffered in the short time after an explosion. But a transcript shows that the airline lawyer, Howard Barwick, suggested that the explosion had killed the men instantly, and argued there there was no suffering to compensate. The tactic worked, Mr. Kreindler said. The award for pain and suffering was zero.
In the salesman's case, Mr. Kreindler said, even a $1 million award for pain and suffering would probably be a tiny fraction of the award because death cases focus mostly on compensating survivors for lost support, the amount the victim would otherwise have provided.
The salesman was a star at work. At 28, he had been made United States sales director for one company and then had been hired away by another. Early this year, the new company gave him an ownership stake, the title of executive vice president and a salary of about $500,000.
In court, a lifetime of lost support is typically estimated through the testimony of economists. By analyzing age, salary and other benefits, they project how much a person might be expected to earn over a lifetime.
From that sum is subtracted the amount the person might have spent on things like subway fare or country club dues.
An economist might persuade a jury, Mr. Kreindler argued, that a hard-driving person like the salesman might work well past 70. It was plausible, he said, to assert that the salesman would have had 40 years ahead of him and that he would have earned more than $500,000 in each of those years. In all, the lawyers concluded, the economic losses might be as much as $25 million.
Some states award families compensation for their own noneconomic losses, like lost companionship. In its September legislation, Congress said the fund should compensate for such losses, too.
The salesman's case "is a very sympathetic case for noneconomic damages because he never knew his son," said Mr. Green, Mr. Kreindler's associate. Possible noneconomic damages in a court case, the lawyers said: $5 million. The $30 million total they hope for would be among the largest ever in a wrongful death case. It is impossible to say whether any such sum could be recovered.
A few days after the lawyers computed what the salesman's case might bring, another lawyer, Alan L. Fuchsberg, was estimating the value of a case involving another man who died on Sept. 11.
He was 42 and earned $54,000 as a clerk in a financial firm in the World Trade Center.
Mr. Fuchsberg said the clerk's case might bring a substantial award for pain and suffering. The office he worked for was on the 90th floor of the second tower to be hit, where there were announcements encouraging people to return to their desks while the first tower burned.
The clerk, Mr. Fuchsberg said, would have had plenty of time to understand his circumstances. "Obviously," the lawyer said, "it got very smoky and hot and unbearable."
But Mr. Fuchsberg said he told the clerk's father to expect a comparatively small award for economic damages, especially if it was difficult to prove that the clerk, who was single, provided substantial support to his aging parents. Mr. Fuchsberg said some claims for single people with no dependents could be worth as little as $100,000.
The clerk's father, who asked not to be named, said he was stunned to learn the role a person's income played in lawyers' math. "The value of a life is certainly not determined based on earnings," he said, his voice breaking. "We're talking about my son."
Total amount of all cash whci can be taken fro Bin Lauden et al
Divided by
Total number of victims
equals
amount of award per family.
Spare me the sharks.
Literally, eaters of the dead.
Maggots are better company, and have better morals and manners.
--Boris
I know precisely how you feel...
FMCDH
That said, it's unlikely in this instance that solvent potential defendants (the airlines, the World Trade Center, etc.) have liability. I would note, however, that a representative of the Center was directing those fleeing to "return to their offices; all is well", using a bullhorn. If I were a relative of one who followed those directions and therefore died, I sure would want the World Trade Center to pay.
Who is being sued and for what?
Yeah, only legal sharks can come up with this angle. As if lawyers don't already have a "tarnished" reputation.
Every cent donated with the intent of easing the pain and suffering of people left behind should be divided equally between the families. I don't care if the person murdered was a child, janitor, window washer, or the CEO of some big-deal company. The loss in each case is staggering.
Haggling over the "worth" of one person over another is nauseating, and each of these lawyers should be made to walk through the ruins of the WTC. Maybe then they'd get the point.
Me next!....I'll answer with -$10.00 and I'll haul them away to make shark bait free of charge!....What do I hear?!...
FMCDH
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