9/11 families settle lawsuit

2007-09-18 10:08

Adam Goldman

New York - The families of more than a dozen victims of the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks reached a settlement that avoids the prospect of them having to revisit the horrors of that day during a long trial.

The 14 cases were brought by families who chose not to receive payments under the September 11 victims' compensation fund, created by the US Congress to provide payments to those killed or injured and to protect the airline industry from financially crippling lawsuits. The fund distributed about seven billion dollars in all.

Those who accepted money from the fund had to agree not to sue. But those who did not accept payment maintained their right to sue.

Those families saw the compensation fund as "inherently unfair", and they wanted to know more about what happened on the day of the attacks, said Don Migliori, the lawyer representing the 14 families. He said the families achieved both of those goals in reaching the settlements, the terms of which were not disclosed.

"We are ready to put this aspect of our loss behind us," said Patrick Nassaney Snr, whose son died in the attacks. "The feelings we are left with are mixed. We learned a great deal about what happened on September 11th, but compensation does not heal our wounds."

Migliori said he believed the case turned on a decision last week by a US District judge to allow several minutes of Flight 93's cockpit voice recorder to be played for the jury at an upcoming trial in Manhattan, just blocks from the site of the World Trade Centre.

Cockpit voice recording has never been publicly released

One of the portions included the last minutes of the passengers' lives as they struggled to retake the United Airlines plane.

Migliori said he was not allowed to describe the substance of the tape. But he did say the last five minutes revealed the heroism of the passengers before the plane went down in a Pennsylvania field.

"There's no single more important piece of evidence of trying the Flight 93 case than the cockpit voice recorder," he said.

The settlement means a trial scheduled to start next Monday involving one of the 14 families will not take place. Migliori said 21 cases remain out of the original 96 that opted out of the compensation fund.

The cockpit voice recording has never been publicly released, though it was played at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, and relatives of the victims were permitted to hear it in private.

Flight 93, which was en route from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, was the only one of the four planes hijacked on September 11 that did not reach its intended target, believed to be in Washington.

Investigators believe the hijackers crashed the plane into a field as passengers rushed the cockpit.

- AP