MANHATTAN FEDERAL Judge Alvin Hellerstein was yesterday expected to approve a settlement of up to $657.5 million (€478 million) for some 10,000 rescue and clean-up workers at Ground Zero, the site where the World Trade Center (WTC) stood.
The death toll hit 2,752 after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Thousands of firefighters, police officers, construction workers and volunteers subsequently suffered from asthma, other respiratory diseases or blood cancer, presumably as a result of exposure to smoke and dust.
Under the terms of the agreement, announced by the WTC Captive Insurance Company on Thursday night, 95 per cent of the plaintiffs must accept the settlement within 90 days for it to be valid. The cost will be $575 million if 95 per cent accept, and $657.5 million if all plaintiffs accept.
A further $23.4 million has been set aside to cover future claims by people who were exposed to contaminants but have not yet fallen ill.
Payments will range from $3,250 for those least affected to almost $2 million. Claimants will have to prove they were on the site of the atrocity, and that their medical complaints are authentic. An independent third-party expert will review each claim.
The settlement is the result of a long and acrimonious legal battle. WTC Captive was created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) in 2004, after other insurance companies refused to consider claims filed against New York City and the construction companies that cleaned up the site. It was endowed with $1 billion in federal funds.
“This agreement enables workers and volunteers claiming injury from the WTC site operations to obtain compensation commensurate with the nature of their injuries and the strength of their claims, while offering added protection against possible future illness,” WTC Captive said.
Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg said the settlement was “a fair and reasonable resolution to a complex set of circumstances”.
If the settlement had not been reached, trials were scheduled to start in May. One of the first cases to have been heard was that of Raymond Hauber, a fireman who died of oesophageal cancer in 2007 at the age of 47.
The City of New York and the federal government funded free medical care for people who participated in the rescue. But lawyers for the city claimed it was not liable for damages caused by a national emergency or civil defence disaster.
They said there was no proof of a connection between illnesses and presence at Ground Zero. In some cases, they asserted that illnesses predated the 9/11 attacks. The city was criticised for claiming in 2008 that a third of plaintiffs suffered only minor ailments.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs will receive one-third of the hundreds of millions of dollars in payments. Marc Bern, a senior partner with a firm representing 9,000 of the plaintiffs, called it “a good settlement” and urged his clients to accept. Fema has already paid more than $200 million in administrative and legal fees to defend New York City and its contractors.