Cantor Fitzgerald Agrees to Settle 9/11 Lawsuit Against American Airlines

[SecularMotion]

Source: NY Times

The Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald has agreed to settle a near-decade-old lawsuit against American Airlines and its insurers over Cantor’s business and property losses resulting from the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center.

Cantor lost 658 of its nearly 1,000 New York employees when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the trade center’s north tower, where Cantor headquarters occupied top floors.

Lawyers for both companies disclosed the agreement on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where the case was scheduled for trial next month.

“We have reached an agreement on the terms of a settlement,” Cantor’s lawyer, John F. Stoviak, told Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/nyregion/cantor-fitzgerald-agrees-to-settle-9-11-lawsuit-against-american-airlines.html?hp&_r=0

[Boomerproud]

1. I was working in a mail room/trust department at the time and we received a fax not 5 minutes

before the attack from Cantor Fitzgerald. Still with me to this day.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. They got hit hard.

The Siemens building next door to me has a small memorial plot out back, with trees and names of their 17 employees that died.

I can't imagine losing over 50% of my co-workers at a single stroke. Unreal.

[Mz Pip]

3. How was American Airlines responsible for this?

Why not sue Saudi Arabia instead?

[Blue_Tires]

4. As always, probably because AA is an easy obvious target with deep pockets...

And even then AA was still able to keep the case tied up on court for a decade...

[SharonAnn]

5. AA was responsible for their airline security. Their policies were in force

for security. Airline security was privately handled before TSA.

[SoapBox]

6. But the knives and box cutters were allowed by the FAA.

Even if the contract security saw those weapons at screening, they were legal to be carried on board.

Wouldn't this be more of, they were "there" so it's partly their fault...thanks to our stupid legal system.

[noise]

9. Secrecy has prevented the public from fully understanding the airline security lapses

Specifically, Low and other plaintiffs have pointed to breakdowns in passenger screening areas where the hijackers armed with box cutters, knives, and pepper spray passed by. The defendants include not only the airlines, but also Massport, which runs Boston's Logan Airport, where Flight 11 and the second trade center flight, United 175, originated; Globe Aviation Services, then the primary security contractor for American; and Boeing, the manufacturer of the hijacked 767 jets that lacked impenetrable cockpit doors.

"It's not hard for me to continue when I know there is so much information that needs to be made public," Low said.

"There was an incredible amount of negligence, incapacity, and neglect, and that story has not been told," Low said. "To read the depositions is a difficult process. I get angry every time I read them because of so many missed opportunities."

Mike Low pursues lawsuit.

[ThomThom]

8. they did not provide adequate security

they did not have a door and locks on the cockpit cabin for one
this had been suggested to the airlines and rejected as too costly and would take planes out of service for too long

[bluestateguy]

10. I'd have sued the airline security companies

You think the TSA was incompetent? The folks who used to work for the private security companies at airports made the TSA workers look like Rhodes Scholars.