Re: The Federal Compensation Fund For Sept. 11 Victims
From: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)
Tue Mar 12 16:25:14 2002
Joe -
the NYPD and NYFD were slow to respond????
what are they puttin in those crawfish. sorry but you touched a nerve -
i lost friends in that atrocity.
just my opinion - i could be wrong.
art
At Tue, 12 Mar 2002, DoctorJoe@aol.com wrote:
>
>In a message dated 3/12/02 12:32:07, annam@uic.edu writes:
>
><< I hope anyone who decides to sue rather than accept the government
>settlement ends up tied up in court for years and losing half of
>whatever they get to the lawyers.(biting my tongue) >>
>
>Well, if you step back and look at it from a liability/policy/pragmatic
>standpoint (like they teach you in law school), there's the difference
>between 9/11 and Okla. City:
>
>1) Okla. City - liability would rest with the U.S. Government. It's their
>building, their (theoretic) breach of security, their failure to keep a truck
>full of fertilizer further away, yada, yada, yada. Anyone seeking to file a
>CIVIL suit (i.e. for money) would certainly not sue McVey. He's poor,
>uninsured, and dead. There's no recover there. The ONLY other target would
>reasonably be the U.S. Government. So... if you want to sue, sue the
>government and you may win - they may settle for a reasonable amount, or your
>attorney may make a good case, etc, etc, etc. The U.S. Government pays, maybe
>a few hundred - bottom line. Nothing else to say.
>
>2) 9/11 - liability would rest with whom? The airlines let dangerous people
>on board... the WTC had inadequate escape routes... the NYPD and NYFD were
>too slow to respond... the hospitals didn't treat survivors fast enough...
>yada, yada, yada. If you want to sue for civil damages, you could mount a
>large class action against the airlines, the owners of WTC, the NYC
>departments, etc. Thousands of members of the classes could, with proper
>legal representation, mount a large and expensive attack on these
>organizations, causing disruption in airlines, the rebuilding or
>reorganization of downtown NYC, etc, etc. The impact COULD be devastating...
>e.g. the airlines already took a big hit and are in bad shape to begin with.
>So what would a good policy decision be? To help out the airlines, NYC, big
>business, etc, you need to ... volunteer to buy out the potential plaintiffs
>with government money and avoid the deleterious impact. Bottom line - U.S.
>Govt. pays off the plaintiffs to save a large number of businesses, etc.
>
>So the two scenarios are very different, but the Govt. ends up paying both,
>for different reasons.
>
>Make any sense? Or am I rambling?
>
>Joe P.
--
art fougner, md
ich bin ein New Yorker
