National Report
Wednesday, March 6th, 2002 Catastrophe Litigation Property Workers' CompensationSaying that because both towers in the World Trade Center complex could have been destroyed by a single plane, insurers are arguing that the event should count as one insured loss. A lawyer for Travelers Indemnity told a federal court in mid-January that one hijacked airliner could have felled both towers because they shared a six-story basement, according to the Associated Press. The collision of the first plane “may well have rendered the second building unusable even in the absence of a second airplane,” said attorney Harvey Kurzweil at the hearing. Seeking to limit its payout to the leaseholder of the complex, Larry Silverstein, Swiss Reinsurance filed suit in late October, asking a judge to declare that the attack constituted a single occurrence. The company has commissioned engineering studies to back up its contention that the first hijacked plane’s impact with the first tower would have destroyed the second tower.
