About half of the 11,000 World Trade Center workers suing the city have no illness or proof of illness

Mere fear of illness gets plaintiffs 3G+

About half of the 11,000 World Trade Center workers suing the city have no illness or proof of illness -- but still would get $3,250 to $6,500 each under a proposed settlement.
Some 9.9 percent of plaintiffs claim no injury, according to a report prepared last September for Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein.
"All they have to do is sign up," said attorney Gregory Cannata, who represents about 60 workers. "They just have to say, 'My name is Bill Jones. Please pay me $3,250.' "
Another 40.9 percent of claimants provided only a doctor's letter. They offered no further proof, such as medical tests or records. They would be entitled to collect $6,500.
The filed report was based on data from 9,000 Ground Zero workers. It excludes another 2,000 claims, many of which were filed after the report was completed.
Cannata has argued to the judge that those cases should be dismissed.
The "giveaways" drain about $25 million that could otherwise go to the most seriously ill and disabled workers, he said.
A source close to the city said payments were included for non-injured workers because they claimed "a fear of getting sick" and could use the money for medical monitoring.
By the numbers
Details of the World Trade Center workers' settlement plan:
* 11,000 claimants
* Up to $657.5M in payouts if 100% of plaintiffs opt in; $575M in payouts if 95% opt in. 95% percent is minimum required for settlement.
* $59,773 to $65,750 the estimated average award; $1M for some severe illnesses.
* 25% to 40% of total proposed to be set aside for lawyer fees and expenses.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mere_fear_of_illness_gets_plaintiffs_p7urS4RzU6PdALcOVgYqiM#ixzz0koxyCs3f

Court To Hear Ground Zero Liability Case

Story at The New York Sun:

A federal appeals court's reading of an obscure Cold War-era law, passed amid fears of a Soviet nuclear attack, will decide whether the thousands who toiled at ground zero can hold the city liable for their exposure to toxins.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan, will hear oral arguments today on whether the city is immune from lawsuits brought by the thousands of firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who searched for survivors and cleaned up on the site of the World Trade Center.

Many of the workers say they now suffer from respiratory ailments linked to arsenic, asbestos, and other toxins found in the air and dust at the site. One estimate, by the lawyer who managed the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth Feinberg, places the cost of settling the suits at more than $1.5 billion.

At issue is a U.S. District Court ruling from last year that allows as many as 10,000 of those workers to press forward with suits against the city. The city is asking a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court to overturn that decision, which was handed down by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who sits in Manhattan.

The conditions at ground zero have long been under the microscope, with workers alleging that the Environmental Protection Agency put out falsely optimistic air quality reports and that government agencies failed to ensure that workers were wearing respirators. In May, the city's medical examiner amended a woman's death certificate to state for the first time that toxic dust from the site had been a "contributory" cause of death.

But today's arguments, and ultimately whether the suits are upheld or thrown out, will not turn on any single fact about the conditions at ground zero or the city's actions in the days following the terrorist attacks. Instead, the court's decision could hinge entirely on its reading of the New York State Defense Emergency Act.

That law, enacted in 1951, grants immunity from lawsuits to the government and companies responding to an attack. While the enemy the Legislature had in mind was the Soviet Union, Judge Hellerstein's ruling found that the passage of history had not made the law irrelevant. The city, the judge wrote, was certainly entitled to immunity in the days immediately following the attack.

However, the judge said it was an open question whether that immunity extended months later, as work at ground zero continued: "As the emergency condition fades … the need for immunity diminishes and the obligations and duties otherwise imposed once again must be protected," Judge Hellerstein wrote.

A brief filed on behalf of the workers stresses that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, ground zero became a work site where ordinary workplace regulations and responsibilities applied.

During the nine-month cleanup operation, the plaintiffs' brief argues, "the site had been radically transformed from a place of chaos and public emergency to an orderly construction site not unlike those the City of New York has often seen."

The city, on the other hand, contends that it is entitled to immunity for the entire duration of the recovery operation.

The city's brief stresses the law's Cold War history, noting that lawmakers in 1951 were anticipating cataclysmic attacks, from which any recovery would be slow.

"The rescue and recovery from a nuclear attack would greatly exceed — perhaps by years — the roughly nine-month period of the 9/11 rescue and recovery operation," the brief argues.

The panel hearing the case today is to consist of Judges Jon Newman, Sonia Sotomayor, and Richard Wesley.

A lawyer from the firm of Patton Boggs, James Tyrrell, will argue on behalf of the city.

The plaintiffs will be represented today by Kevin Russell of Howe & Russell, P.C., and Brian Shoot of Sullivan Papain Block McGrath & Cannavo, P.C.

"

“If the bones are still there,” Ms. Mattei said, “why do we assume that the asbestos and the lead are not?”

E.P.A. Is Urged to Widen Focus on 9/11 Health Effects - New York Times:

"Speaking at a Congressional hearing held in Brooklyn Borough Hall, they said that with the recent focus on the deaths and illnesses of people who worked at the World Trade Center disaster site, effects on those farther from ground zero were being overlooked.

Several experts presented evidence that they had gathered in recent years of increased asthma rates and widespread home contamination in Brooklyn, and urged more research to at least determine the extent of the problems.

Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, said that having already misled ground zero workers that the air they breathed was safe, the E.P.A. was now engaged in a “second cover-up.”

“This,” Mr. Nadler said, “is that the people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City and Queens are still being poisoned daily.”

The hearing was conducted by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform and was presided over by Representative Edolphus Towns, a Democrat of Brooklyn.

In the hours and days after the attacks on the World Trade Center, aerial photographs showed the main plume of smoke and dust blanketing a northwest-to-southeast swath of Brooklyn.

The E.P.A. paid for apartment cleaning in some of the Manhattan neighborhoods closest to ground zero, and in 2005 it proposed expanding its clean-up zone to affected areas of western Brooklyn and farther north in Manhattan. But it dropped the plan after an independent panel rejected the agency’s proposed criteria for determining contamination.

At yesterday’s hearing, an official in the State Department of Health’s Office of Managed Care cited a study, which his office helped conduct in the summer of 2002, of Medicaid recipients with pre-existing asthma. The survey found that asthma sufferers in western Brooklyn were 2.4 times more likely to complain of worsened asthma after 9/11 than asthma sufferers in the rest of the city — more likely even than asthma sufferers in Lower Manhattan.

The survey also found that asthma sufferers in western Brooklyn were 1.5 times more likely to have visited a hospital for asthma complaints than those in the rest of the city, the health official, Patrick J. Roohan, said.

Yvonne J. Graham, the deputy borough president in Brooklyn, said that of the $140 million that the federal Department of Health and Human Services gave to health care organizations after the attacks, only $5.5 million went to Brooklyn, $4 million less than the Bronx, which was not in the path of the main plume.

Kwa-Cheung Chan, a former assistant inspector general at the E.P.A., said that in a 2003 survey conducted by his office, about a quarter of Brooklyn respondents said that their homes had been contaminated with dust or debris from 9/11. A survey by the Sierra Club in neighborhoods southeast of the Brooklyn Bridge, including Red Hook, Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope, found similar results, said Suzanne Y. Mattei, the club’s New York City executive.

“This is only preliminary information meant to indicate where further testing needs to be done,” Ms. Mattei said, “but it sure does follow the dust cloud.”

Representative Anthony D. Wiener, a Democrat from southern Brooklyn, recalled watching scraps of paper settling on the terrace of his office near the waterfront in Sheepshead Bay, nearly 10 miles from ground zero.

Bonnie Bellow, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. in New York, said by telephone yesterday, “While we had a wide range of various kinds of data to indicate there certainly was some dust that went to Brooklyn, we have focused our program closest to ground zero.” The agency, she said, was “prioritizing the testing and the necessary cleanups” there.

Ms. Bellow said the agency had not been invited to attend yesterday’s hearing.

Mr. Chan said that five years down the road, it made more sense to examine people than their homes.

“It’s like when you dirty the water, a few years later you start to see mercury in the fish,” he said. “Why don’t we look at the fish rather than the water?”

But Ms. Mattei said that even at this late date, a cleanup could prevent health damage.

“There’s no World Trade Center dust left on the kitchen table,” Ms. Mattei said. “But what about the carpet, the curtains? I’m more concerned for young children and toddlers.”

She noted that even five years after what she said was an exhaustive effort to locate the remains of those who died on 9/11, they are still turning up on building rooftops and elsewhere.

“If the bones are still there,” Ms. Mattei said, “why do we assume that the asbestos and the lead are not?”

Correction: April 28, 2007

An article on Tuesday about a Congressional hearing in Brooklyn at which speakers urged the Environmental Protection Agency to address contamination and medical problems in areas outside Lower Manhattan resulting from the Sept. 11 attack included incorrect information about the hearing from a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. Although the agency itself was not invited to testify, the agency’s inspector general, who operates independently, was. (He declined the invitation.)

Original story at NY Times link

Rudy-Giuliani
9/11 Presents Challenges for Giuliani - Yahoo! News:

9/11 Presents Challenges for Giuliani

By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 30, 11:07 AM ET

NEW YORK - Rudy Giuliani's White House aspirations are inescapably tied to Sept. 11, 2001 — for better and for worse.

While the former mayor of the nation's largest city was widely lionized for his post-9/11 leadership — "Churchillian" was one adjective, "America's mayor" was

"While the former mayor of the nation's largest city was widely lionized for his post-9/11 leadership — "Churchillian" was one adjective, "America's mayor" was Oprah Winfrey's assessment — city firefighters and their families are renewing their attacks on him for his performance before and after the terrorist attack.

Oprah Winfrey's assessment — city firefighters and their families are renewing their attacks on him for his performance before and after the terrorist attack.

"If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was among the 343 FDNY members killed in the terrorist attack. "If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime — that's indisputable.

"But when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem."

Such comments contradict Giuliani's post-Sept. 11 profile as a hero and symbol of the city's resilience — the steadfast leader who calmed the nerves of a rattled nation. But as the presidential campaign intensifies, criticisms of his 2001 performance are resurfacing.

Giuliani, the leader in polls of Republican voters for his party's nomination, has been faulted on two major issues:

• His administration's failure to provide the World Trade Center's first responders with adequate radios, a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed. The Sept. 11 Commission noted the firefighters at the World Trade Center were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center.

Regenhard, at a 2004 commission hearing in Manhattan, screamed at Giuliani, "My son was murdered because of your incompetence!" The hearing was a perfect example of the 9/11 duality: Commission members universally praised Giuliani at the same event.

• A November 2001 decision to step up removal of the massive rubble pile at ground zero. The firefighters were angered when the then-mayor reduced their numbers among the group searching for remains of their lost "brothers," focusing instead on what they derided as a "scoop and dump" approach. Giuliani agreed to increase the number of firefighters at ground zero just days after ordering the cutback.

More than 5 1/2 years later, body parts are still turning up in the trade center site.

"We want America to know what this guy meant to New York City firefighters," said Peter Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. "In our experiences with this man, he disrespected us in the most horrific way."

The two-term mayor, in his appearance before the Sept. 11 Commission, said the blame for the death and destruction of Sept. 11 belonged solely with the terrorists. "There was not a problem of coordination on Sept. 11," he testified.

Giuliani was also criticized for locating the city's emergency center in 7 World Trade Center, a building that contained thousands of gallons of diesel fuel when it collapsed after the terrorist attack.

The lingering ill will between Giuliani and firefighters was resurrected when the International Association of Fire Fighters initially decided not to invite the former mayor to its March 14 candidates forum in Washington. Other prominent presidential hopefuls, including Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressed the nation's largest firefighters union.

According to the Giuliani camp, the contretemps with the union dates to tough contract negotiations in his second term as mayor. His critics deny any political motivation.

The IAFF drafted a membership letter — it was never sent — that excoriated Giuliani and promised to tell "the real story" about his role in handling the terrorist attack.

The then-mayor's decision to change policy on the ground zero recovery effort was "an offensive and personal attack" on firefighters, the letter said, going on to say that Giuliani's "disrespect ... has not been forgotten or forgiven."

Giuliani countered the attacks by releasing an open letter of support from retired firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son was among the 2,749 victims on Sept. 11. "Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter than Rudy Giuliani," Ielpi said.

A contingent of nearly 100 South Carolina firefighters also expressed their support for Giuliani and his White House hopes.

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant, predicted the 9/11 criticisms could resonate beyond New York during the presidential campaign.

"These are very emotional people who will touch a responsive chord with a lot of the electorate," he said. "The things that the 9/11 families say will wind up in television commercials used against Rudy Giuliani."

The issues also have forced Giuliani to try to strike a balance to avoid the perception that he's exploiting the attacks for his own personal gain. President Bush" President Bush faced the same challenge in 2004 when he invoked the attacks to portray himself as a strong and steady leader in the face of terrorism. Some victims' relatives criticized Bush for using the ruins of the World Trade Center in his campaign commercials, while others defended him.