Terrorists were responsible for 9/11, not airlines or WTC

A federal judge has ruled that lawsuits filed by survivors of 9/11 victims can go forward on the grounds that the events of that day were foreseeable.
This is a dangerous course, one that will not only drag out litigation in this case, but could open the door to future litigation arising from future incidents of terrorism.
And it is unnecessary, because Congress -- in another move that set a precedent -- has already established a fund that offers reasonable compensation in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Kenneth Feinberg is special master of a $6 billion federal victims' compensation fund to which application for compensation must be made by Dec. 22. Those who accept compensation from the fund are barred from pursuing civil litigation, but only about a third of the victim families have done so.
The minimum compensation is $250,000. So far, the average approved claim has been $1.5 million and the largest has been $6.8 million.
These amounts dwarf any other government compensation programs available to victims of crimes, and that, of course, is what the people who died on 9/11, are -- crime victims. They were murdered by a band of suicidal terrorists.
Assigning blame
But the ruling by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein will allow lawyers to shift the blame from the murderous perpetrators to defendants with deeper pockets. His ruling said negligent security screening might have contributed to the deaths of 3,000 people in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the crash of a hijacked plane in Pennsylvania. And the Boeing Co. could have built stronger cockpit doors and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey should have foreseen that the World Trade Center that it operated was a target for terrorists.
A suitcase bomb being set off in a city, a nuclear devise being smuggled in on a container ship, an airline being downed by a Stinger missile, anthrax spores being sent through the mail, poisonous gas being released on a subway, an explosion at a chemical plant, an attack on a nuclear power plant -- any of these and a thousand other things are possible, even foreseeable.
And there are obviously efforts being made by government and private industry to prevent acts of terrorism. But if terrorist have time to plan, money to finance their operations and enough hate coursing through their veins that they are willing to give up the lives to kill others, some will eventually succeed. There are, simply, too many variables.
The next time terrorists strike, who will be to blame? A bus company, power company, chemical company or shipper? No. The terrorists will be responsible.
What's fair?
The judge's ruling blurs that line of responsibility just as surely as the claim by some victim families that the federal victims fund offers inadequate compensation. Well, of course it does. No amount of money can compensate for the loss of a loved one under any circumstances. But while some 9/11 families are spurning million-dollar settlements, widows of soldiers killed in Iraq can't keep up with the mortgages on their homes. Where is the greater injustice?
No doubt, some of the families will pursue 9/11 lawsuits because they are still seeking closure, others may actually believe the plaintiff lawyer's mantra that they're serving society by forcing the defendants to be more careful in the future and others are simply greedy. It should fall to the judge to tell those plaintiffs that they should seek their closure, reform and enrichment elsewhere. And in this case, the judge failed.