9/11 First Responders Win $712.5 Million Settlement for WTC Toxic Dust Injuries

When the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001, tens of thousands of rescue workers, police officers, firefighters, and construction crews descended on the smoldering pile at Ground Zero. They worked for months breathing air laced with pulverized concrete, asbestos, heavy metals, and combustion byproducts. In the years that followed, hundreds developed serious respiratory diseases: reactive airway dysfunction syndrome, chronic cough, asthma, and, for some, cancer. Many were told by city officials at the time that the air was safe. It was not.

Workers began filing suit against the City of New York and its contractors, and the cases were consolidated before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York. The court appointed a small group of attorneys to serve as plaintiffs' liaison counsel, coordinating the sprawling litigation on behalf of plaintiffs. Paul Napoli was named one of those court-appointed co-liaison counsel and ultimately represented the largest share of claimants.

The WTC Captive Insurance Company, funded by a $1 billion FEMA grant from 2004, was the primary source of compensation. Napoli and co-counsel spent years in discovery and bellwether proceedings pushing the case forward while the insurance fund sought to limit payouts. Settlement talks were difficult. An earlier framework required 95 percent of eligible plaintiffs to opt in before it could take effect, a threshold that created pressure on both sides.

In June 2010, Judge Hellerstein signed off on a revised settlement worth up to $712.5 million with the city and its contractors, after rejecting an earlier $657.5 million version in March. Napoli, whose firm represented the largest block of plaintiffs, told the Insurance Journal that the deal went a long way toward paying a debt incurred on September 11. A separate agreement added a $47.5 million contribution from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. By November 2010, when the opt-in period closed, 10,043 of the 10,563 eligible claimants had accepted, meeting the 95.1 percent threshold by a margin of fewer than 100 workers.

Judge Hellerstein, upon signing the order, called it 'not perfect, but very, very good.' Attorneys, including Napoli's firm, agreed to cap fees at 25 percent and collectively gave back more than $50 million in compensation they were otherwise entitled to under their agreements. The most severely injured workers, those with cancers or severe asthma, could receive up to $1 million each. Workers who also received workers' compensation benefits remained eligible for distributions.