The ruling in New York is that the World Trade Center’s owners cannot demand payouts from the attacks.
A federal judge has just made insurance news headlines when he ruled that the owners of the World Trade Center are not permitted to make demands of billions of dollars of additional payments from insurers due to the attacks on September 11, 2001.
The owners of the buildings will not be able to receive the money from the airlines and their insurers.
The insurance news was made when Judge Alvin Hellerstein made his decision after hearing witnesses for the owners of the World Trade Center as well as for the airlines associated with the hijacked planes that led to the destruction of the buildings in the horrific terrorist attack that changed the world. The trial was held in order to decide whether or not the owners of the buildings would be entitled to collecting more than the $5 billion that they had already been paid to rebuild.
The lawyers for the airlines made insurance news announcements saying that additional payments would mean duplicate claims.
Those attorneys insisted that the insurance news was already made when the insurers made the initial payments to the owners of the buildings. Now, the coverage of the airlines would be paying out duplicate claims if they were forced to make any additional payments, they said. Moreover, according to Roger Podesta, one of the airlines’ attorneys, the payment would bring the total up to $8.5 billion, which would be over two and a half times the fair value of the collapsed buildings.
However, World Trade Center Properties and Developer Larry Silverstein’s lawyers insisted that the airlines still owed them at least $3.5 billion for allowing the hijackers to board the planes in the first place so that they were then able to follow through with their plan to crash into the three towers (the twin towers as well as 7 World Trade Center, the neighboring 47 storey building that was destroyed by debris from one of the crashed planes and fire).
Before the insurance news making trial began, Hellerstein said that he would not announce his ruling until the trial was concluded. This was accomplished without the use of a jury.
