PROPOSED 9/11 SETTLEMENT FOR INJURED CLEAN UP AND RESCUE WORKERS NIXED BY FEDERAL JUDGE

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens injury lawyer)

On Friday March 19, 2010 Federal judge Alvin Hellerstein torpedoed a proposed settlement for some 11,000 rescue and emergency workers that were made sick as a result of the "9/11" cleanup at Ground Zero.

The settlement would have been paid by the City of New York and would have established a fund to pay injured New York City clean up personnel at least $575 million.

After presiding over a hearing in Manhattan Federal Court where he heard testimony from workers who were hurt by toxic fumes while working at the Ground Zero site, Judge Hellerstein ordered attorneys for both sides to come up with a better deal for the injured plaintiffs.

Simply put, Judge Hellerstein felt that the sick and injured workers would realize too little money in the settlement and the lawyers awarded too much. Not only did the judge insist on reducing the lawyers' fees, he insisted that the attorneys be paid out of additional money, above and beyond the amount offered for settlement.

The proposed agreement to settle the injury cases would establish a point system to calculate awards based on a worker's illness, age, medical history and time spent working in hazardous conditions. The judge noted that the formula make a Talmudic scholar's head "spin and revolve 24 hours a day and still it would be hard to grasp these numbers." He also stated: "I will not preside over a settlement based on fear or ignorance," noting that the settlement's provision that an outsider would calculate the recovery to be awarded to each hurt worker - like a "dictator," with no right of appeal - was unfair to those injured through no fault of their own.

Not surprisingly, lawyers for both sides decried the judge's ruling as making the cases more difficult to settle and delaying justice for the injured victims.