Yeah! So what if we didn't do anything to protect the grunts working for us from exposure to asbestos and other harmful compounds! We were volunteering, get it? We shouldn't have to worry about silly things like public health and the welfare of people on the front lines when we're volunteering! I mean, do you know how much we could have charged to disregard those workers' health and safety? We did it for free, you ungrateful bastards. It's not like we got paid for your lung cancer this time around, so stop being so snippy.

Arrival of the 9/11 Troof Brigade in 5...4...3...

They knew the possible consequences when they got their degrees. I say let 'em get sued.

WHAT THE fark IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??

Not you specifically. But the assholes that will sue anybody for anything?

Maui Haui: They knew the possible consequences when they got their degrees. I say let 'em get sued.

I thought the Pentagon/Bush/Giuliani were in absolute control of the 9/11 response.

You know, things like censuring the EPA when the air quality was measured. I'm going to take a guess that some structural engineer wasn't given authority over the EPA and that someone higher up had to be responsible

For civil suits, is there an equivalent of a grand jury that can just throw out the whole thing before the defendant even has to start dealing with it? If not, there really ought to be.

Pocket Ninja: Yeah! So what if we didn't do anything to protect the grunts working for us from exposure to asbestos and other harmful compounds! We were volunteering, get it? We shouldn't have to worry about silly things like public health and the welfare of people on the front lines when we're volunteering! I mean, do you know how much we could have charged to disregard those workers' health and safety? We did it for free, you ungrateful bastards. It's not like we got paid for your lung cancer this time around, so stop being so snippy.

So it's the fault of a structural engineer? Your troll-fu is weak today.

Sue the people that came to help guide them thru rubble. How are the people suing able to even look at themselves in a mirror.

Where did all that money the charitys collected go? Wasen't enough collected to make every offical survivor or relative a millonaire ten times over?

The only grounds they would have for suing a structural engineer, surely, would be if something structural fell on them.

/Civil Engineer.

Hey, no offense--I'm all for tort reform and making sure that good deeds go unpunished--BUT--those engineering firms accepted money for their services.

FTFA: The engineering firms were paid by the city, leaving them ineligible for protection under good Samaritan Laws.
that exposes them to lawsuits.

had they turned down the money paid them by the city, they'd be free from good Samaritan laws.

Sounds to me like someone was thinking ahead down at city hall.

Oh for farks sake...

thalidomide new and improved: Hey, no offense--I'm all for tort reform and making sure that good deeds go unpunished--BUT--those engineering firms accepted money for their services.

FTFA: The engineering firms were paid by the city, leaving them ineligible for protection under good Samaritan Laws.
that exposes them to lawsuits.

had they turned down the money paid them by the city, they'd be free from good Samaritan laws.

Sounds to me like someone was thinking ahead down at city hall.

In your opinion then, where does the liability end? Should they sue the taxi driver who drove them to the site? What if while they were at the site they were bitten by a mosquito and contracted encephalitis? Regardless of whether these engineers were paid or not, they were being paid to analyze the stability of the debris. It was not in their scope of work to direct what level of respiratory protection should be worn.

It all comes down to a contest of pockets. The feds won't cough up for these folks that were injured in the recovery effort so they will keep suing until someone does.

Remember, engineers are more valuable than lawyers as human beings.

Hell, trash collectors are more valuable than lawyers.

/First, we kill all the lawyers.
//It's always a good first step.

h to the 'ojo: Maui Haui: They knew the possible consequences when they got their degrees. I say let 'em get sued.

I thought the Pentagon/Bush/Giuliani were in absolute control of the 9/11 response.

You know, things like censuring the EPA when the air quality was measured. I'm going to take a guess that some structural engineer wasn't given authority over the EPA and that someone higher up had to be responsible

This is true.

thalidomide new and improved: Hey, no offense--I'm all for tort reform and making sure that good deeds go unpunished--BUT--those engineering firms accepted money for their services.

FTFA: The engineering firms were paid by the city, leaving them ineligible for protection under good Samaritan Laws.
that exposes them to lawsuits.

had they turned down the money paid them by the city, they'd be free from good Samaritan laws.

Sounds to me like someone was thinking ahead down at city hall.

And this is also true. The sordid details will come out in court, which will vindicate the Engineering firm from Fraudulent or Negligent damages. The EPA claimed Ground Zero was safe for workers. The Engineering firm took the information in good faith. They did nothing to expose themselves to a successful lawsuit.

For civil suits, is there an equivalent of a grand jury that can just throw out the whole thing before the defendant even has to start dealing with it? If not, there really ought to be.

There are gateways a lawsuit has to pass through but negligence cases rarely get thrown out of court before trial. They are very often settled before trial on the initiative of the parties.

Lawsuits by insane prisoners suing the government over the CIA's telepathic messages can be thrown out by a judge at any time. These people haven't paid the filing fee.

Lawsuits that don't actually allege legally recognized harm can be thrown out at the defendant's request very early in the process. If McCain sues Romney for calling him a liberal, that's not actionable and Romney can win with only a few thousand dollars of lawyer's fees. As long as the plaintiff claims something actionable happened, even if the claim is false, the lawsuit proceeds past this stage. The question is, assuming everything the plaintiff says is true, could the plaintiff win?

If there is a possibility of success the parties fight a long, expensive battle to gather evidence. If it turns out the plaintiff can't find any evidence, the case is thrown out on "summary judgment" before trial.

If it's possible that the defendant did something wrong, judges prefer to let the jury decide. If one worker says "Engineer Bob told me to eat that burning chunk of oil-soaked asbestos" and fifty witnesses swear that Bob wasn't at the scene, the jury can decide who to believe. (This is how traffic courts screw drivers -- cases are heard by judges who will almost always believe the police officer no matter how implausible the story.)

Harvey Keitel in Bad Samaritan

wildcardjack: Hell, trash collectors are more valuable than lawyers.

/First, we kill all the lawyers.
//It's always a good first step.

Don't be so harsh. Only 99% of lawyers make the reset look bad.

/started studying law before I found out I have too much respect for myself.

ceremony_1968: Arrival of the 9/11 Troof Brigade in 5...4...3...

EPA Response to September 11

September 18, 2001

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced today that results from the Agency's air and drinking water monitoring near the World Trade Center and Pentagon disaster sites indicate that these vital resources are safe. Whitman also announced that EPA has been given up to $83 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support EPA's involvement in cleanup activities and ongoing monitoring of environmental conditions in both the New York City and Washington metropolitan areas following last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances," Whitman said. "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink," she added.

/The truth is now a bad word

FTA: A lawyer representing many of the sick workers insists the engineers should be held responsible because they "directed the work at the World Trade Center, providing safety support, doing structural and environmental testing, controlling various aspects of work at the site."

Structural engineers are NOT responsible for environmental testing. Let me say that again, in case you missed it. Structural engineers are NOT responsible for environmental testing.

They are not qualified for this work and if they were ever caught performing this work without the proper training, their professional licenses would be revolked. Environmental testing is handled by what is called "environmental engineers". This is disgusting and I cannot see how this case has a leg to stand on.

The structural engineers were there to provide support for removing the debris left when the towers fell.

/BS Civil Engineering
//MS Environmental Engineering

OK can someone explain the stupid tag? Surely you cant consider it stupid for a proffesional to be leary of accepting work in a situation that caused them to be sued the last time they did it.

HeadLever: This is disgusting and I cannot see how this case has a leg to stand on.

Welcome to New York. (That'll be $10 $25 - love and kisses, Eliot Spitzer and the New York State Legislature, a subsidiary of SEIU Local 1199)

Jennifer: Where did all that money the charitys collected go? Wasen't enough collected to make every offical survivor or relative a millonaire ten times over?

Good question. Perhaps you should post this thought in a thread that has something to do with victims famili......fark it.

*Jingles keys at Jennifer:*

So what exactly did these people expect of the Structural Engineers? It's not like the engineers said "oh it's jolly good, go ahead and enter this burning severely damaged building, nothing is going to happen." No, they did the best they could with the limited resources they were given and probably saved hundreds of lives. That there were deaths and injuries was inevitable.

Digitalstrange: OK can someone explain the stupid tag? Surely you cant consider it stupid for a proffesional to be leary of accepting work in a situation that caused them to be sued the last time they did it.

Stupid tag goes to the plaintiff.

This case hasn't been concluded yet, so I guess we'll see where it ends up.

The firefighters and others that went to ground zero did so without regard to their own personal safety. Had someone told them specifically that they would expose themselves to environmental hazards often without the proper safety equipment, most of them would still have gone.

It is wrong that we haven't done more to help them, though. These guys are heroes as much as any wounded veteran.

Of course, we haven't always done right by wounded vets, either, have we.

Wait? So Structural engineers working at ground zero...are getting sued by other workers at ground zero...for not telling the other workers to use more safety precautions...that the engineers weren't using themselves? Wow...

I was joking. Was a takeoff on the Airplane movie line. Nevermind.

These workers should be suing Christine Todd Whitman and Condi Rice really, but their butts are covered so the affected workers are going after the structural engineers instead. Their anger is righteous even if their target is wrong.

The EPA wasted little time in assuring New York residents and rescue workers that the area surrounding ground zero was safe. On September 13, 2001, just two days after the attacks, the agency issued a press release in which it explained "sampling of bulk materials and dust found generally low levels of asbestos. The levels of lead, asbestos and volatile organic compounds in air samples taken Tuesday in Brooklyn, downwind from the World Trade Center site, were not detectable or not of concern."¹ A September 18, 2001 press release was even more confident, quoting then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman: "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, DC that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink."

Link

atlanta_ufo: Sue the people that came to help guide them thru rubble. How are the people suing able to even look at themselves in a mirror.

Pretty easily I'd imagine.

Pocket Ninja: Yeah! So what if we didn't do anything to protect the grunts working for us from exposure to asbestos and other harmful compounds! We were volunteering, get it? We shouldn't have to worry about silly things like public health and the welfare of people on the front lines when we're volunteering! I mean, do you know how much we could have charged to disregard those workers' health and safety? We did it for free, you ungrateful bastards. It's not like we got paid for your lung cancer this time around, so stop being so snippy.

So the next time you're bleeding to death on the side of the highway, I take I shouldn't stop and volunteer to help you, since you're clearly going to sue me?

Good Samaritan protections are in place for precisely this kind of situation. They were interested in keeping the maximum number of people alive RIGHT THAT MOMENT. Anyone who doesn't think trudging into the wreckage of a destroyed building is going to be dangerous has nothing to blame but their own naivete.

Well, I walked right into that one...

From TFA -- the reason these companies are getting sued is that the government has basically said, "Not our problem" to any of the responders who have come down with lung cancer, etc from the debris.

So now you've got thousands of volunteer rescuers coming down with deathly illnesses, and no one to pay for their treatment. So they go see a lawyer, who says, "well, we can't beat the government, but here's a tangentially-involved third party that, unlike the government, CAN'T declare themselves magically immune to lawsuits."

Yeah, it's bullshiat, but see how YOUR ethics hold up when you get diagnosed with cancer and you have no way to pay for it because you've been abandoned by our country.

It's a farking national disgrace. Half of those firefighters who were photo-op backdrop for Bush at Ground Zero will be dead of lung cancer in a decade. And for their unpaid sacrifice, they will be left to die.

We need a national settlement fund for the firefighters, cops, ironworkers and engineers who bravely gave of themselves to dig out Ground Zero.

FTA "Three years ago, when I was president of the Structural Engineers Association of New York, someone called from New Orleans looking for volunteers," Tortorella recalled. "I sent out an e-mail to the entire membership, about 500 members. Only 13 people responded."

He said the engineers told him their bosses wouldn't allow them to help out "because of the lawsuits."

And so, Atlas shrugged...

You mean it's unlikely that I will be able to sue Al Queda or Osama bin Laden for my illness? I'll just sue some Americans that tried to help then.

It's like a criminal running from the police that hurts somebody... The criminal is broke and in jail, so sue the police because the city has money.

Recall all Repuglikkkans: Eh, no difference than how we treat our veterans. Repuglikkkans love war, but hate the costs. Meanwhile, the Repuglikkkans are hard at work to make sure that the phone companies that illegal spied on Americans for them are protected.

Come on. If you are going to post strawmen, I know that you can do better than that.

ceremony_1968: Arrival of the 9/11 Troof Brigade in 5...4...3...

Piff, you're not going to tell me that 9/11 wasn't the first that fire melted steel is it >:[

It was always totally obvious that the falling towers spread toxic dust everywhere and didn't stop burning for days. Anyone who had air quality concerns should have been in Jersey. Seriously.

Recall all Repuglikkkans: Better in what way? I found it a pretty good strawman. I'd think anything more than that would be too much. Would you rather "Meanwhile the Repuglikkkans are hard at work putting a $3 trillion budget that is nothing more than a blatent cash grab for their friends in military-industrial complex out to just kill brown people all day" or "Meanwhile the Repuglikkkans are hard at work trying to poison Ginsburg and quickly appoint another right-winger to ensure a overturning of Roe v. Wade"? I mean, which do you suggest? I got enough straw back here for a million of them.

Add something original, not just the same talking points that you hear 24/7. Stay away from the same old liberal catch phrases like "love war", "illeagly spied", "millitary-industrial complex", "kill brown people", and "overturning Roe v. Wade".

These phrases are old and start raising flags when you see them. Normally, when these tired phrases are used in strawmen such as yours, it suggests that you belong to a group of folks that have a hard time thinking "outside of the box", if you will.

Maui Haui: They knew the possible consequences when they got their degrees. I say let 'em get sued.

You sir, are a moron who has just earned a spot my ignore list.

Mayhem_2006: /Civil Engineer.

Do you have your P.E. license? If so, how long and what discipline?

Digitalstrange: OK can someone explain the stupid tag? Surely you cant consider it stupid for a proffesional to be leary of accepting work in a situation that caused them to be sued the last time they did it.

should have been an obvious tag