American and United Airlines and others sued alleging their negligence allowed the deadly hijackings

This ought to be interesting:


On the day before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks
on the U.S., insurers for some World Trade Center buildings
sued American and United Airlines and others, alleging their
negligence allowed the deadly hijackings. The suit, which was
filed by London's QBE International Insurance and certain
underwriters at Lloyd's of London, seeks over $300 million from
each of the two airlines and various amounts from other
defendants. The insurers want to recover monies they paid out
for property damage and other losses caused to World Trade
Center buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5 as well as nearby structures.
The case is among a number of Sept. 11 related suits filed
recently to meet the three-year statute of limitations deadline
on Saturday. Among defendants in the case are the airlines'
parents AMR CORP. and UAL CORP. United said it does not comment
on pending litigation. American did not have an immediate
comment. For a list of other defendants, click the "More..."
link.
(Reuters 03:57 PM ET 09/10/2004)

Mo

http://q1.schwab.com/s/r?l=248&a=100...a&s=rb040 910

----------------------------------------------------------------

What a crock of SH**! The airlines are not responsible for security, the
US Government is, Sue them. The airlines have never made the rules
either. Blame the government.
Michelle

Larry Dighera wrote:

This ought to be interesting:


On the day before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks
on the U.S., insurers for some World Trade Center buildings
sued American and United Airlines and others, alleging their
negligence allowed the deadly hijackings. The suit, which was
filed by London's QBE International Insurance and certain
underwriters at Lloyd's of London, seeks over $300 million from
each of the two airlines and various amounts from other
defendants. The insurers want to recover monies they paid out
for property damage and other losses caused to World Trade
Center buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5 as well as nearby structures.
The case is among a number of Sept. 11 related suits filed
recently to meet the three-year statute of limitations deadline
on Saturday. Among defendants in the case are the airlines'
parents AMR CORP. and UAL CORP. United said it does not comment
on pending litigation. American did not have an immediate
comment. For a list of other defendants, click the "More..."
link.
(Reuters 03:57 PM ET 09/10/2004)

Mo

http://q1.schwab.com/s/r?l=248&a=100...a&s=rb040 910

----------------------------------------------------------------





--

Michelle P ATP-ASEL, CP-AMEL, and AMT-A&P

"Elisabeth" a Maule M-7-235B (no two are alike)

Volunteer Pilot, Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic

Volunteer Builder, Habitat for Humanity

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:53:47 GMT, Michelle P
wrote in
::

The airlines are not responsible for security, the
US Government is, Sue them.

Well, the government (you and I) has already given the airlines a
substantial subsidy for their revenue losses subsequent to 9/11. Now
the insurance companies are looking for a scapegoat.

Look for suits against aircraft manufacturer Boeing as well:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...2e3608&rnum=52

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:53:47 GMT, Michelle P
wrote in
::

The airlines are not responsible for security, the
US Government is, Sue them.

Well, the government (you and I) has already given the airlines a
substantial subsidy for their revenue losses subsequent to 9/11. Now
the insurance companies are looking for a scapegoat.


The airlines also had policies of acquiesense to hijackers, as opposed
to policies of resistance. They still oppose arming of cockpit crews. I
would think that these policies are the chink in their armor against
these lawsuits.

Well, duh!! If Boeing hadn't built those things so well, they would've
broken up on impact and not hurt the buildings, and the falling debris would
have been so small as to no injure any ground-pounder, and if they were
slower we could have knocked them down with rocks, and if....

As someone else wrote.. what a load of crap.

--
Jim Carter
"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

Look for suits against aircraft manufacturer Boeing as well:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...2e3608&rnum=52

I don't see any option but to sue the families of the Wright Brothers. Those
damn bicycle builders should have seen what thier invention would be capable
of less than 100 years later.


"Jim Carter" wrote in message
om...
Well, duh!! If Boeing hadn't built those things so well, they would've
broken up on impact and not hurt the buildings, and the falling debris
would
have been so small as to no injure any ground-pounder, and if they were
slower we could have knocked them down with rocks, and if....

As someone else wrote.. what a load of crap.

--
Jim Carter
"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

Look for suits against aircraft manufacturer Boeing as well:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...2e3608&rnum=52

Not exactly.
The airlines hired the companies that provided the bodies that manned
the security checkpoints.
Also, the airlines had some discression (as they still do now) as to how
strictly to follow the federal guidelines. (Now, they add their own
items to the feds list.)

Michelle P wrote:
What a crock of SH**! The airlines are not responsible for security, the
US Government is, Sue them. The airlines have never made the rules
either. Blame the government.
Michelle

Michelle P wrote
What a crock of SH**! The airlines are not responsible for security, the
US Government is, Sue them. The airlines have never made the rules
either. Blame the government.

This is about the ONLY credible argument I have heard in favor of not
holding the airlines liable for the 9/11 incidents - they were
micromanaged by the FAA to the point where they could no longer
develop effective security procedures. Nevertheless, I still don't
buy it.

Airplanes are commercial equipment but are also potentially dangerous,
and they are dangerous in direct proportion to weight and useful load,
and in quadratic proportion to speed. They can cause damage by
impact, where energy of impact is half the mass multiplied by the
square of the velocity. They can also deliver explosive or incendiary
payloads, thus the useful load hazard.

It it well accepted in civil law that those who own and operate
commercial equipment that is potentially dangerous have an obligation
to take reasonable steps to secure that equipment in proportion to the
hazard posed. Drawing on my own professional experience, consider a
chemical plant. Chemical plants are dangerous, primarily to those who
work in them but also to those who just happen to be in the
neighborhood. A knowledgeable terrorist in posession of just a few
pounds of dynamite and a few blasting caps could cause explosions and
toxic chemical releases that would kill hundreds or thousands. These
things have happened before by accident.

So why are chemical plants not seen as potential terrorist targets?
Well, they certainly are. Why don't we shut them down? We need them
- they produce everything from mouthwash to gasoline, and shutting
them down would cripple the economy. So how do we handle the risk?
Well, in two ways - direct regulation and market forces (via the tort
process).

Direct regulation is OSHA (to which airliners are not subject - IMO a
bad mistake) and other regulatory bodies that set safety
standards. However, if an accident occurs and all you show is that
you did the minimum required to comply with regulation, that doesn't
protect you from civil liability. You must also show that you did
everything reasonable to prevent the accidents. I find it highly
unlikely that widespread terrorist attacks against chemical plants are
in the cards. The operators of these plant are already taking most
reasonable measures to prevent accidents, and that includes adequate
security to keep people who don't belong out of the plants. The
larger and more hazardous the plants, the greater the care taken.

Security at a chemical plant is NOT a joke - it's serious. Getting in
without proper identification and a reason for being there most likely
won't happen, and you won't be bringing much of anything with you.
These are hardened targets, and thus not at all attractive to a
terrorist.

The driving force is risk management - insurance. Some plants carry
insurance, others (generally owned by the very largest conglomerates)
are self-insured, but in either case there are professional risk
managers reviewing the operation, including security, with an eye
towards reducing the probability of an accident.

The FAA and the Airlines maintained the "play-along" posture with
regard
to our procedural response to high-jackers far beyond the time when it
was appropriate relative to the known threat. There never was
justification for a cockpit crew member of a two-person crew to leave
a
duty station to go back to the cabin, in-flight, to help sort out a
problem.

No passenger should ever have gained access to the cabin of an
airliner
while in possession of anything which could reasonably be used as a
deadly weapon. We had adequate warning of the disastrous potential
from
previous fatal incidents.

There is no doubt in my mind that reasonable steps
were NOT being taken to protect the general public. The only question
is WHY? You seem to want to pin the blame on the FAA, and if it's
really true that the airlines tried to do it the right way and the FAA
would simply not allow it (I don't dispute that this could be, but
that's not how it looks) then the liability rests strictly with the
FAA. However, to the extent the airline management was complicit with
this non-security, the blame rests there as well.

Prohibited weapons were almost routinely
carried through our so-called security screening points prior to, and
even after, 9/11, according to the Government's own tests.

Airline security was always a bad joke. That
shows bad faith - it shows that the airlines knew their commercial
equipment was NOT being secured, and were ignoring it. Who ran the
security process? Hint - the security was not made a government
function until AFTER 9/11.

Perhaps the
Insurance companies will ultimately help solve comparable future
problems and protect their investors by helping to establish realistic
standards of security for those industries in which they have
considerable exposure.

Given that this is what has happened in every other industry I can
think of, I am at a loss to explain why this has not happened in the
airline industry. That's about the only reason I am willing to
believe that government (FAA) interference might preclude effective
security.

Michael

"Michael" wrote:
I find it highly
unlikely that widespread terrorist attacks against chemical plants are
in the cards. The operators of these plant are already taking most
reasonable measures to prevent accidents, and that includes adequate
security to keep people who don't belong out of the plants. The
larger and more hazardous the plants, the greater the care taken.

Man, you and I hve *definitely* been frequenting different chemical
plants. Two of our industrial customers keep scads of truly nasty
chemicals on their sites. Their security consists of rent-a-cops
checking id's, handing out passes and raising gates you could knock down
with a Honda Civic. A terrorist driving a bomb truck could roar through
the gates of one of these places and detonate it next to a tank of
enough evil stuff to create another Bhopal in south Alabama. I'll bet
many more such circumstances exist along the Houston ship channel. Why
Al Qaeda hasn't taken advantage of this is a mystery to me, but then why
they haven't attempted any attack at all in three years is mysterious.

Security at a chemical plant is NOT a joke - it's serious. Getting in
without proper identification and a reason for being there most likely
won't happen, and you won't be bringing much of anything with you.

That's assuming you're polite enough to stop and get your cute badge and
wait for your escort, not just bust in driving a 2 1/2 ton truck full of
a fertilizer bomb. At a plant in Mississippi which I shall not name,
there is a narrow maze of concrete barriers at each entrance road,
built, one assumes, on the theory that terrorists would never simply
break through the adjacent chain link fences and drive in off-road.

The driving force is risk management - insurance. Some plants carry
insurance, others (generally owned by the very largest conglomerates)
are self-insured, but in either case there are professional risk
managers reviewing the operation, including security, with an eye
towards reducing the probability of an accident.

They're worried about their employees screwing up or a visitor wandering
around and getting hurt. They know they have no hope of stopping a
determined terrorist attack without turning their plants into nuke
plant-like fortresses, which I've seen no sign they are willing to do.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 19:52:40 -0500, "Dan Luke"
wrote:

I'm assuming that Michael been having a bad week. He's been bickering
with Honeck about how a nice paint job means that an airplane is a
piece of crap, now it appears that he feels that there is some merit
in the suit discussed in this thread.

It's his opinion, and he is entitled to it.

My opinion is slightly different.

Despite what any practicing attorney will tell you, suits of this type
serve one basic purpose-they generate income for attorneys. If you
(collective you, nothing personal) think ANY "legal team" gives a
flying pock about anyone's pain-and-suffering, there is a fundamental
difference in our opinions that will never be bridged.

I've been hanging around airports most of my life. It sounds like you
(personal you this time) have been around a couple chemical plants.

If we could be somehow transformed into the mindset that the 9-11
terrorists were in, I doubt if any private company or government
agency could stop us from causing chaos, terror, and death.

Israel has been trying to do so for years. I'm sure they've had some
successes, but reading the newspaper, it seems like they've had some
failures also.

I'm curious-in Israel, if a bus gets blown up by a suicide bomber,
does the bus line and the manufacturer of the bus get sued?

Anyone, I repeat anyone, who thinks that "liability" in the 9-11
scenario can be placed on anyone except the poor misguided sick and
twisted motherpockers that convinced themselves that they were doing
"the right thing", is someone that I will always have a fundamental
disagreement with.

It doesn't mean I'm "wrong", nor that they are "wrong".

Just means that I've been having a bad week too.

Regards;

TC

snip

Man, you and I hve *definitely* been frequenting different chemical
plants. Two of our industrial customers keep scads of truly nasty
chemicals on their sites. Their security consists of rent-a-cops
checking id's, handing out passes and raising gates you could knock down
with a Honda Civic. A terrorist driving a bomb truck could roar through
the gates of one of these places and detonate it next to a tank of
enough evil stuff to create another Bhopal in south Alabama. I'll bet
many more such circumstances exist along the Houston ship channel. Why
Al Qaeda hasn't taken advantage of this is a mystery to me, but then why
they haven't attempted any attack at all in three years is mysterious.

snip