Judge condemns lawyers' 9/11 profiteering

[TonyGosling]

Judge overturns 9/11 settlements
Lawyers' fees, amounts of deals for 4 victims called unreasonable

By BENJAMIN WEISER
New York Times
July 25, 2008, 9:54PM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5908365.html

NEW YORK — A federal judge in Manhattan took the unusual step on Thursday of overturning settlements in four lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the 9/11 attacks, saying the firm that negotiated the deals was seeking excessive legal fees and that the settlement amounts themselves were unreasonable.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein sharply criticized the firm, Azrael, Gann & Franz, of Maryland, saying its request for 25 percent of $28.5 million it had recovered "would reflect a very large windfall," and that its "entire strategy seems to have been to coast on the work of others."

Late in the game
The four cases were among the last remaining suits being settled on behalf of 95 people killed or injured in the crashes of the four planes into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pa., in 2001.
Hellerstein wrote that the Azrael firm appeared, as part of its strategy, to have decided to wait until very late in the litigation before entering into meaningful settlement talks.
"Azrael's strategy made little contribution to the progress of the cases before me," and was "now an affront to the hard work that others contributed," the judge wrote.

No special treatment
The lawsuits represented only a small number of the 9/11 victims, whose claims in most cases were resolved through payments from a government compensation fund that paid $7 billion to families of those killed or injured in the attacks, according to the fund's 2004 report.
The judge noted that 15 law firms had handled the lawsuits.
He said he had taken steps, such as limiting contingency fees to 15 percent and requiring judicial approval of settlements, to make sure they were fair.
He also said that there should be no advantage to being late or early in the settlement process.
A spokesman for the Azrael firm did not respond to messages seeking comment.