Cantor Fitzgerald Settles 9/11 Suit Against American Airlines for $135 Million

[Indi Guy]

Source: New York Times

More than a dozen years after the Sept. 11 attacks, a last major piece of litigation against the airline industry and other defendants moved toward an end on Tuesday, as the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald revealed that it would settle its lawsuit for $135 million.

Cantor had accused American Airlines of negligence in allowing five terrorists to board the plane in Boston that crashed into the World Trade Center’s north tower, killing 658 of Cantor’s almost 1,000 employees in New York.

Last week, the firm said it would settle its suit, filed in 2004.

No amount of money, of course, could compensate Cantor or its families for the losses on Sept. 11, but the agreement, announced less than a month before the case was to be tried in Manhattan, followed years of legal sparring over what damages Cantor could seek...

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/nyregion/cantor-fitzgerald-settles-9-11-lawsuit-for-135-million.html?_r=0

[Skittles]

1. they should have sued Saudi Arabia

[Indi Guy]

2. Indeed, and maybe American Airlines should...

...join th fight to get the 28 redacted pages declassified.

[Skittles]

4. absolutely they should

[Enrique]

5. that was tried, but the Saudis were determined to be immune from such lawsuits

at one time James Baker was their man in court. Eventually the Saudis prevailed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30families.html

[Ace Acme]

3. It's interesting that Judge Hellerstein has been assigned to so many of the 9/11 cases.

Last edited Tue Dec 17, 2013, 09:11 PM - Edit history (1)

I would expect a more random distribution of the cases.

The FAA received 52 warnings of the threat of al Qaeda attacks, and passed many of them on to the airlines.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13203-2005Feb10.html

The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months before Sept. 11, 2001, that al Qaeda hoped to attack airlines . . . .

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports. . . .

Of the FAA's 105 daily intelligence summaries between April 1 and Sept. 10, 2001, 52 mentioned bin Laden, al Qaeda or both, "mostly in regard to overseas threats."

I mean, really. How difficult is it to beef up the cockpit door? The Hart-Rundman report of January 2001 I believe advocated hardening of cockpit doors. You'd think that in response to warnings of possible al Qaeda attacks believed to be planned for overseas some of those cockpit doors might have been hardened.