| By Gail Appleson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawsuits against airlines and the World Trade Center's owners can proceed, a judge ruled on Tuesday, finding in favor of families who say negligence played a key role in the casualties caused by the Sept. 11 attacks.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein refused to dismiss litigation against the American Airlines unit of AMR Corp., UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, jet maker Boeing Co. and others including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and World Trade Center Properties.
The aviation defendants, which include airport security firms, have conceded that they owed a duty to the crew and passengers on the four planes used in the attacks. But the latest decision involves victims inside the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and entities that suffered property damage.
The plaintiffs say the airlines could have done a better job of preventing hijackers from taking control of the four planes on Sept. 11, 2001. They also say Boeing's aircraft could have been designed better to thwart potential hijacks and that the World Trade Center was badly designed for evacuation.
American Airlines, United and Boeing said they will appeal the ruling.
"We continue to believe that we are not liable for the events that occurred that day," American Airlines spokesman Todd Burke said, adding that the fund set up by Congress to compensate victims was the "fairest, most efficient method for compensating these individuals."
Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said: "The responsibility lies with the murderers who led the attacks."
"FORESEEABLE RISK"
The aviation defendants argued that they were not liable for injuries caused to those on the ground since the attacks were unforeseeable and they followed government safety rules.
Hellerstein said it was too early to rule on liability, but said that airport screening methods should protect people on the ground as well as those aboard airplanes.
"While it may be true that terrorists had not before deliberately flown airplanes into buildings, the airlines reasonably could foresee that crashes causing death and destruction on the ground was a hazard that would arise should hijackers take control of a plane," Hellerstein said.
"The intrusion by terrorists into the cockpit, coupled with the volatility of a hijacking situation, creates a foreseeable risk that hijacked airplanes might crash, jeopardizing innocent lives on the ground as well as in the airplane," he added.
The ruling comes as families must choose whether to join the suit or seek payment from a national compensation fund.
Plaintiffs lawyer Michel Baumeister praised the decision, saying it was, "of critical importance" that the judge ruled aviation defendants had a duty to the ground victims.
The deadline for filing with the compensation fund, created to protect airlines from litigation that could bankrupt them, is Dec. 22. However, legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday could extend that deadline until December 31, 2004.
By late August some 2,275 claims were filed, but about 1,700 families had yet to decide whether to enroll with the fund or join litigation.
The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court was brought by 70 of the injured and representatives of those who died as well as by 10 entities that suffered property damage. Other cases have been filed but not yet heard.
About 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and in the air crash in rural Pennsylvania.
(Additional reporting by Kathy Fieweger) | |
