A judge has approved a $712.5 million settlement between the city and more than 10,000 injured Ground Zero workers despite the impassioned objections of several victims who said the deal shortchanged their specific ailments.
Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein — who rejected an earlier, $657 million proposal as too stingy to the plaintiffs and too lucrative for their lawyers — today called the new agreement “fair, adequate and reasonable.”
But he also conceded that the complex, 110-plus-page pact was “not perfect,” telling one cancer survivor: “It doesn’t work for you perhaps as well as it should have, and I’m sorry for that.”
“I wish there was enough money so that anybody that had any kind of injury got compensated just because he was a hero on 9/11,” the judge lamented.
Retired firefighter Kenny Specht, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2007, said the $10,000 he expects to be offered left him with second thoughts about having searched for human remains among the debris scattered by a giant grappling machine in the World Trade Center pit.
“To be told now that what I did nine years ago didn’t contribute to my cancer is a tough situation to swallow,” said Specht, 41.
City lawyer James Tyrrell angered some speakers at the daylong public hearing by outlining legal strategies that could have defeated the suits filed over illnesses blamed on toxic dust from the 2001 terror attacks.
The deal only takes effect if at least 95 percent of the plaintiffs sign on by Sept. 30.