New York Facing $10 Billion in Claims Over September 11 Cleanup Efforts
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Nearly three years after the September 11 attacks, New York City is still potentially liable for billions of dollars in claims related to the cleanup and rescue efforts at the World Trade Center.
The city’s law office has received some 2,234 notices of claim, the first step in filing a suit, according to figures from the Office of the Comptroller.
The notices of claim filed against the city would amount to more than $9.8 billion in potential damages from workers and volunteers who say that their participation in the rescue and cleanup efforts at ground zero and the Fresh Kills landfill made them sick.
“This cause of action is because the city lied to the volunteers, workers, and the heroes at the site and failed to give them the proper equipment,” said lawyer Marc Bern, a senior partner of Worby, Groner, Edelman, Napoli, Bern. About 500 of the firm’s clients have filed notices of claim against the city. “We expect to file more,” he said.
A notice of claim alerts a defendant of the intention to file suit. Sometimes, those suits are settled or dismissed for lack of evidence or, in the case of the September 11 attacks, are discontinued when claimants receive money from the Federal Victims Compensation Fund.
About 1,300 notices of claim have been discontinued because those claiming damages got money from the 9/11 fund. But even with those claims set aside, the city is still liable for some $5.3 billion in potential claims, according to figures compiled by the comptroller’s office. Twelve police officers, 15 construction workers, and 57 sanitation workers have sued the city, according to figures from the city’s law office.
The problem for New York is that this is just the beginning. The respiratory problems, chronic coughs, cancers, and other airway diseases that are cited in the notices of claim obtained by The New York Sun fall largely under a legal rubric known as Toxic Torts, which effectively have no time limit.
If you have an injury you generally have to file a notice of claim within 90 days of sustaining it. In New York, there is a special statute related to toxins. In “Toxic Tort” cases the clock starts ticking on when plaintiffs can file depending on when the illness was discovered. Medical experts say cancers and other ailments take longer to appear, so effectively there is no real time limit.
“Firefighters who worked at 9/11, some developed minor coughs and it didn’t make sense to file with the victims’ fund or file suit back then,” said a partner at the law firm of Sullivan, Papain, Block, McGrath & Cannavo, Michael Block. “Now they are developing serious respiratory injuries and it does make sense to file.”
Mr. Block has filed 31 notices of claim on behalf of firefighters in the past three months. His clients include Thomas Gillam, a firefighter from Long Beach who responded to the September 11 attacks and now suffers from, among other things, reactive airway disease. He’s asking for $2 million in damages from the city.
Mr. Block’s suits use a boilerplate that says the city failed to provide firefighters a safe place to work, the proper protective clothing and equipment, failed to inform firefighters of the true nature of the air quality, and was otherwise “careless, reckless, and negligent.”
The city’s exposure to such suits got worse last year, when a report by the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general concluded that the agency’s administrator at the time of the attacks, Christie Todd Whitman, could not have possibly known the air quality at ground zero was safe a week after planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers.
On September 18, 2001, Ms. Whitman said that the air in Lower Manhattan was “safe to breathe.” The EPA said subsequently that such assurances could not have “been based on scientific fact.”
Mr. Block said the to-ing and fro-ing by the EPA has been part of the reason why his law firm decided to go forward with the suits against the city. Mr. Bern agreed. He said he expects to file suit, separately, against the EPA.
“Part of the claim alleges that the EPA mislead the firefighters regarding hazards of the site,” Mr. Block said. “But the meat of the claim is the city. We were always skeptical that the toxin levels were not dangerous. But more importantly we also knew the firefighters were not given the necessary protection. Employers have an independent duty to take care of their workers.”
More than 300 firefighters have retired with disabilities related to their work at ground zero, according to the FDNY. Officials there expect as many as 500 firefighters will have to go out on disability as a result of their work at the attack site.