by Lionel Bascom — June 26th, 2008 — 1 comment
Widespread press reports say that many of the thousands of people who have gone to court for illnesses stemming from the 2001 terror attacks don’t have serious health problems. This claim was made by lawyers for New York City in court papers.
About 10,800 plaintiffs claim to suffer from a wide variety of health problems from breathing toxic dust from the debris of the World Trade Center after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They are seeking compensation from an insurance fund.
The claims are filed in federal court in Manhattan, where U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein is overseeing the cases. About half were filed by city workers, including police officers and firefighters.
In a letter to Hellerstein last month, the law firm hired by the city, Patton Boggs LLP, contended that its review of the pending claims indicated that about 30 percent of the people seeking compensation allege “only nominal injuries.”
The letter, first reported Wednesday by The New York Times, said 30 percent of claims involved cases in which a specific ailment was not diagnosed. The claims instead describe symptoms, such as a runny nose or sleep problems.
7:08 PM in Uncategorized, World Trade Center, Ground Zero, Related Stories, We Will Never Forget, Politics
Even if 30% of the claimants have minor illnesses, according to these lawyers, that still indicates that 70% of these thousands of claimants have serious injuries. My question is this. Are lawyers now in the diagnosing business, too?
Jeanne · June 27th, 2008 at 1:17 pm