Lawyers look for someone to sue over terror attacks

By ELEANOR BLACK and AGENCIES

At least two Australian families are considering seeking compensation for relatives who died as a result of the terrorist attacks on the United States.

They have joined the thousands of grieving Americans expected to apply for a slice of a compensation fund thought to be worth $12.6 billion set up by the US Government or to file their own damages claims in the New York courts.

But Queensland lawyer Pat Nunan, an aviation specialist who is advising the unnamed Australian families, said settling these claims could take up to three years as investigators struggled to identify victims and establish their cause of death.

Even then, the amount of any life insurance or superannuation payouts received by the families would be subtracted from the grants.

Determining whom to sue could also prove tricky. Lawyers are already pointing the finger at United Airlines and American Airlines (which owned the hijacked airliners), the airports in Boston, Washington and Newark, where the flights originated, the city of New York and even Osama bin Laden.

Mr Nunan said families of the dead airline passengers would have an easier job claiming money than those with relatives inside the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Lawyers would argue "viciously and vigorously" that it was foreseeable that a plane would crash into a building, causing passenger deaths.

They could seek damages from the airlines and airport security firms for not preventing the hijackers from boarding the planes and entering the cockpits.

Arguing it was foreseeable that thousands of New York office workers would die because their building collapsed as they sat at their desks awaiting safety instructions would be tougher.

Boeing, the manufacturer of all the planes that crashed on September 11, might also be pursued by families who had lost their primary earner due to lack of security equipment on board. A class action suit against the terrorists responsible and Afghanistan, the country that harbours their leader, is another, though distant, possibility.

And the borough of Manhattan might be sued for automated loudspeaker messages which urged World Trade Center workers to stay in their offices. The messages were part of a legally enforced emergency plan and lawyers might try to prove they caused thousands of deaths.

Mr Nunan, who is in close contact with US law firms, said American colleagues were urging clients to be cautious about claiming money through the fund.

"I know of a case where offers were made to a group of people in an aircraft crash shortly after the crash only [for them] to find out three months later that those who had held on got 10 times that amount."

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