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Lucky Larry wants $12.3 billion
more for 9/11
Jerry Mazza
Online
Journal
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Like the proverbial bad penny, Lucky Larry Silverstein
keeps popping up. He’s back and he’s bad again. Not
content with the nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments he
received to cover his losses at the World Trade Center, he is
now seeking $12.3 billion in damages from the airlines and airport
security companies for the 9/11 attack in a suit filed in 2004.
Not tainted enough by the fact that Silverstein & Partners
took out a lease for 99 years in July of 2001 on the WTC, two
months before the attack . . . not content Larry & Partners
upped the insurance at that time to $3.5 billion and (presciently)
to cover potential hits by airliners flown by “terrorist
hijackers” . . .
Not content that Silverstein & Partners subsequently sued
the insurers for $7 billion, considering the attack a double strike
because separate liners hit Towers One and Two. Not content that
Larry spent the next six years in litigation with the insurance
companies, only to have the deal fortunately settled, brokered
by then Governor Spitzer in 2007, yielding $4.55 to Lucky Larry
and Partners . . .
(Article continues below)
Not content either that his personal stake in the lease was only
some $14 million, the balance supplied by his partners. Not content
that he made another $500 million on the destruction of his Tower
7, which he owned and quickly rebuilt bigger and better. Not content
that no liner hit Tower 7 and that the fires were out, he announced
at 3:30 p.m. on 9/11 that there had been so much pain and suffering
that he and the NYFD decided to “pull it” -- Tower
7 . . .
Not content that in fact at 5 p,m,, not even two hours later
. . . Tower 7 went down at the freefall speed of gravity in a
matter of seconds neatly into its own footprint, a classic “internal
demolition.” Not content that you can’t set up an
internal demolition on a 47-story steel-framed building in less
than two hours or two days, or even two weeks. Not content that
his “smoking gun” has attracted the attention of every
9/11 critic around the world . . .
Not content that the BBC made an incredible gaffe as a TV journo
of theirs, supposedly in New York, reported that Tower 7 had fallen,
that is, 26 minutes before it actually fell and with a News24
“time stamp” video to prove it. Not content that even
Google had to pull the video . . . Larry Silverstein, the Oliver
Twist of 9/11 disaster, is back, asking for more, sir, more please.
Incredible! What colossal chutzpah!
But hey, Larry’s got reasons; boy, does he have reasons.
His lawyers aired them in the United States Southeastern District
Court in Manhattan, the same court in which the 9/11 victims families
have been plaintiffs for cases to sue the airlines and security
companies, and by the way, where 90 families have been turned
down for lawsuits and only two remain who haven’t taken
the money and shut up, and where Ellen Mariani has been consistently
turned down and continues to be . . .
Yet,Larry’s lawyers have come to ask the wonderful Judge
Hellerstein for more, the same Hellerstein who asked all the families
to take the money and “move on” and told them that
“money was the universal lubricant . . ." What goes
around comes around.
By the way, the total claims involved come to about $23 billion.
Silverstein’s chunk could endanger claims from other businesses
and property owners, defense lawyers say. Why, Donald Migliori
himself, the lawyer for the victims’ families, said he was
confident “that their claims would not be affected because
they would take priority over the property claims,” as reported
by the New York Times. So they won’t be taking food from
widows’ and children’s mouths to feed Larry, not this
week at least.
Nevertheless, Desmond Barry, a lawyer for the airlines, said
that if Lucky Larry won his claims, “He could push the total
claims beyond the amount of insurance that the airlines and security
companies have available. 'There ain’t that much insurance,'
Mr. Barry said."
Silverstein’s laundry list for the $12.3 billion goes like
this, “$8.4 billion for the replacement of destroyed buildings
and $3.9 billion in ‘other costs,’ including $100
million a year in rent to the Port authority and $300 million
a year in lost rental income, as well as the cost of marketing
and leasing the new buildings.”
Mr. Barry, the Times tells us, reminded Silverstein’s folks
that he “had been more than compensated by the nearly $4.6
billion insurance settlement, reached after almost six years of
litigation. He argued that Mr. S. was entitled to the market value
of the property, which he said had been established by the $3.2
billion.”
Judge Hellerstein was skeptical about Mr. Silverstein’s
claim, and asked why he hadn’t sucked up his losses by just
“walking away.” Hellerstein asked, “What’s
the nature of your recovery,” to which Larry’s lawyer,
Mr. Williamson, answered, “For damages suffered by the events
of 9/11, not value. Damages.” He claimed the lease required
Silverstein to rebuild and keep on paying rent.
Hellerstein retorted, “And so I’m putting to you
if you walked away from the lease, you would lose the value of
the lease . . . Would you have a further obligation to pay money?”
Williamson answered, “You have to examine that question
. . . But to me that’s not the test of what are our damages.”
When Hellerstein pressed for a dollar figure on damages, not
the “precise amount,” i.e., “some order of magnitude
would be appropriate,” Williamson balked. Barry said, “I
think their claim is $12.3 billion.” Williamson added, “Plus
prejudgment interest,” To which Hellerstein “tartly
replied, 'We shouldn’t forget that.'” They won’t
let you, Alvin.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers added that even after many settlements,
there are seven wrongful death and two injury cases remaining
from the more than 90 filed. Migliori, the victims’ survivors’
lawyer, felt that the claims with property damage, including Lucky
Larry and some insurance company looking to recoup payments, should
allow the death and injury cases priority of payment of damages.
Fair enough.
Judge Hellerstein passed on setting a trial date. He said that
would be “fictitious,” yet set a deadline for fact-finding
for Silverstein to offer more documentation of his claim -- or
risk losing it. Any trials, by the way, seem to be more than a
year away.
The real caveat here is that to win a case of that size for damages,
Silverstein would have to go to court for discovery. Meaning his
lawyers could bring in every fireman who heard a blast, Silverstein
himself for his “pull” remark, and even Hizzoner Rudy
Giuliani for saying that morning, at 9:15 to ABC’s Peter
Jennings, on the street that someone told him the towers were
coming down. In short, you could grill ass like the devil until
you found out what really happened.
Bottom line, Larry could get a billion dollar bone thrown at
him, a take-the-money and-shut-up bone. Or Larry could end up
in cement shoes, for real or legally. After all, Larry knew, going
into the lease purchase that the Towers were asbestos-laden bombs,
the first 60 floors sprayed with the building material when built
from 1968 to '72. And they were supposed to be taken down eventually,
according to a 1971 New York Council ban on asbestos.
Obviously, the buildings couldn’t be legally taken down
by explosion or implosion. They would have to be taken down piece
by piece. The cost would be in the billions by today’s standards.
But there was another way to take them down, wasn’t there?
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