Lucky Larry wants $12.3 billion more for 9/11
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Apr 3, 2008, 00:38
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 air****t 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 . . .
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, re****ted 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
re****ted 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 ****t 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 do***entation 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?
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3135.shtml
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