NEW YORK (AP) - Many of the thousands of people who have gone to court
claiming ground zero-related illnesses don't have serious health problems,
lawyers for the city claim in court papers.
About 10,800 plaintiffs claim to suffer from a wide variety of health
problems from breathing toxic dust from the debris of the World Trade Center
after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The claims are filed in federal court in Manhattan, where U.S. District
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein is overseeing the cases. About half were filed by
city workers, including police officers and firefighters.
In a letter to Hellerstein last month, the law firm hired by the city,
Patton Boggs LLP, contended that its review of the pending claims show about 30
percent of the people seeking compensation allege "only nominal injuries."
The letter, first reported by The New York Times, said 30 percent of claims
involved cases where a specific ailment was not diagnosed. The claims instead
describe symptoms, such as a runny nose or sleep problems.
"This is not to suggest that the remaining 70 percent of plaintiffs are
seriously injured," the lawyers wrote. "To the contrary, diagnosable injuries
such as sinusitis and acid reflux are not necessarily serious."
In fact, the lawyers contend, more than 300 of the claims, or about 3
percent of the total, "do not claim any past or current physical injury" at all.
A call to David Worby, one of the lawyers for the workers, was not
immediately returned. But in a separate letter sent to the judge last month, the
workers' advocates suggested the two sides could work together to categorize
claims by their severity.
Lawyers for the workers say the city should stop fighting the claims and
start paying them. The federal government created a $1 billion insurance fund to
handle such claims. The fund is administered by the city.
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