September 11 -- The Litigation Expands

Business Insurance magazine is reporting on the filing of a suit by Insurers against the alleged conspirators responsible for the hijackings and attacks of September 11, 2001.

The suit is believed to be the first filed by insurers against parties allegedly responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to Sean P. Carter, a lawyer with Cozen O’Connor in Philadelphia, representing the insurers. Two similar suits filed by victims of the attacks are pending in federal courts in New York and Washington, and the insurers’ complaint may ultimately be consolidated with one of both of these, he said.

The insurers’ suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York by units of Chubb Corp., Zurich Financial Services Group, OneBeacon Insurance Group, Crum & Forster Corp. and Munich Re Group. So far, these insurers have paid $2.23 billion in property losses and about $500 million in workers compensation losses stemming from the terrorist attacks, according to the suit and Mr. Carter.

More than 500 individuals, entities and governments are named among the defendants.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in New York has allowed suits by September 11 survivors and families to proceed:

Victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks may proceed with lawsuits against airlines, the owner and operator of the World Trade Center and other defendants, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Thursday denied motions to dismiss complaints against United Air Lines Inc. and American Airlines Inc.; WTC owner The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and leaseholder World Trade Center Properties L.L.C.; and Boeing Co., which manufactured the jets that the hijackers crashed into the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa.

About 70 plaintiffs charge in a series of consolidated lawsuits that the airlines failed to stop the hijackers from boarding the planes, that the Port Authority failed to provide safe escape routes and adequate fireproofing in the WTC and that Boeing failed to design secure cockpit doors on its aircraft.

A number of commentators have been critical of the survivors' lawsuits, proment among them Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic in a piece entitled Grief Does Not Justify Greed.