Every single 9/11 hero sickened by 9/11 toxins — firefighter, cop, construction worker — deserves absolute, unstinting care at public expense.
About that, there’s just no question.
Yet that doesn’t mean that 10,000 plaintiffs who are suing the city and 9/11 contractors should automatically each collect a cash windfall — plus unlimited health care until death, to boot.
Alas, federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein seems to think so. Last Friday, he nixed an eminently reasonable — actually, quite generous — deal lawyers had struck on behalf of the workers.
And though he claimed that he did so to ensure greater fairness for the workers, he actually dealt them a sharp blow.
Who knows now if they’ll see any of that money — or when?
Nor does Hellerstein — who is supposed to be impartial — have taxpayers in mind when he calls for greater fairness. He says, for example, that fees owed to the plaintiffs’ lawyers should be paid by taxpayers, rather than by successful litigants.
That’s a bizarre notion even by New York’s dubious tort-law standards — but it gets weirder.
Even though the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the city had agreed on the awards — ranging from several thousand dollars for weak cases to millions for stronger ones — Hellerstein said they weren’t large enough.
As if that should be any of his business.
In fact, the awards would have been more than appropriate.
For starters, claimants wouldn’t have been required actually to prove that 9/11 dust caused their illness. In many cases, simple assertions would have been enough to generate a check.
Moreover, the Hellerstein case — as one lawyer put it — “is just the beginning” of what plaintiffs stand to collect.
Their lawyers are eyeing another $600 million in Port Authority insurance, for instance. Congress’ James Zadroga Act (aptly named for a police detective whose death — the city’s medical examiner later ruled — was not caused by 9/11 toxins) would provide perhaps as much as $10 billion more.
Some would also qualify for disability pensions and private insurance reimbursements.
And on and on.
This has been a tough case from the outset, invested with emotion, driven by politics and heavily populated by tort lawyers — never a good thing.
Hellerstein’s outburst of judicial activism hasn’t helped matters.
Maybe he’s just too emotionally involved at this point.
For clearly he was wrong to blow up the settlement.