9/11 building workers settlement nears

The Deutsche Bank building site at Ground Zero

A settlement between the owners of 160 buildings damaged in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the workers injured during their cleaning, repair and demolition is very likely to come to fruition within months, a court-appointed official said during a hearing today in Manhattan district court. Despite the “monumentally complex” litigation, which involves around 1,300 building workers, 160 property owners and their insurers, James Henderson, a Cornell Law School professor who has been overseeing settlement talks, told U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein that he sees “a very good prognosis” and predicted that a deal is just months away, Bloomberg news reported. The building workers have claimed illnesses caused by exposure to toxic debris from the World Trade Center site. Hellerstein is the same judge who, in June, approved a $712.5 million settlement involving injury claims by rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero. [Bloomberg]