Sunday, January 15, 2012
Sandra Grazioso lost two sons, John and Tim in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices on Sept. 11, 2001 (Photo: Julio Cortez, AP)
Securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its 1,000 employees when its headquarters in Tower 1 (North Tower) of the World Trade Center were destroyed in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, has asked a federal bankruptcy judge to allow the resumption of its damages suit against American Airlines for failing to properly screen the passengers who boarded American’s flight 11 in Boston.
American, whose parent company AMR has been in bankruptcy since November 2011, was entitled by bankruptcy law to an automatic stay, or pause, in the lawsuit’s proceedings, but Cantor Fitzgerald contends that further delay of a case that began more than ten years ago will cause it irreparable harm.
Of twenty-one lawsuits claiming property damages as a result of the 9/11 attacks, Cantor Fitzgerald’s is the only one remaining. Claiming damages of about $100 million when it filed suit in June 2005, Cantor Fitzgerald increased that amount in September 2009 to about $1 billion, but reduced it to $945 million the following May. The court disallowed most of those additional damages theories, however, and Cantor Fitzgerald has been ordered to come up with more realistic calculations.
Cantor Fitzgerald claims financial injuries in six categories: 1) harm to its brand identity, 2) destrucion of its office, 3) destruction of furniture, artwork and other corporate property, 4) destruction of technological infrastructure, 5) destruction of business records and transactions, and 6) business interruption losses.
-Matt Bewig, David Wallechinsky
Cantor Fitzgerald Seeks OK to Sue Airline (Courthouse News Service)
Court Order Limiting Cantor Fitzgerald’s Permissible Damages (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) (pdf)
Airlines and Airport Security Agree to Pay $1.2 Billion for 9/11 Property Damages (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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