The Second Circuit today affirmed summary judgment against Larry Silverstein and his related real estate companies, holding that the September 11 attacks on One and Two World Trade Center were a single “occurrence” rather than two “occurrences” within the meaning of the insurance policies on the World Trade Center, and thus that Silverstein is entitled to $3.5 billion rather than $7 billion in insurance proceeds. I mostly just skimmed the 62-page opinion (link opens in PDF form), which appears to be rather dusty reading relating to the negotiation of the various insurance policies; probably the most interesting part looks to be the court’s decision that the Port Authority is a citizen of both New York and New Jersey for purposes of federal diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction.
Of course, if I’d just won a case saving my client $3.5 billion, I’d find that pretty interesting. Congratulations to the 47 lawyers listed as appearing on the appellees’ various briefs, including my Constitutional Law professor, Charles Fried, and my college classmate and fellow Harvard Law grad John C. Demers.
Day: September 26, 2003
The Devil’s Theory of Joe Morgan
Mike’s Baseball Rants seems to be buying into a theory of Joe Morgan similar to the one I aired here.
Crazy From the Heat
France revises the death toll from August’s heat wave upward to 14,000. The methodology (counting as heat-related any number of deaths beyond the deaths in the same period the prior year) still seems a bit flimsy to me, but a spike of a few hundred over prior periods could be chance; a spike of 14,000 means that probably something over 10,000 is the real number actually caused by the heat.
This is a Bangladesh-size humanitarian disaster. Maybe we can get a benefit concert going to buy air conditioners for elderly Frenchpersons. Call it Cool-Aid.