Credibility in question for some 9/11 health damage suits

Lawyers for a police officer from northern New Jersey who died in 2006 claimed in a court filing that he spent nearly 300 days handling debris at ground zero, but his work records indicate that his actual time and duties related to 9/11 were more limited. During the months the lawyers said the man worked at ground zero, he was recording full-time shifts in Cresskill, N.J.

Another police officer who was listed by her lawyers as having lung cancer, doesn’t have cancer at all. Her actual illness involves something akin to chronic asthma. She insists her lawyers were mistaken.

The three cases are among the 30 plaintiffs whose suits are being considered for May trials over the city’s culpability for chronic illnesses caused by exposure to contaminated dust in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Those cases are among the thousands filed over the health of ground zero workers, but they have an outsized importance.

Of the more than 9,000 legal claims filed against New York City, about 60 have gotten close scrutiny by the court. Of those, 30 are now being considered as candidates for trials in May. US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is overseeing the case, says that group will ultimately be reduced to 12, for the first set of trials.

Hellerstein has said he hopes those initial trials will serve as a road map to settlements for the many other claims by rescue and recovery workers who say they got sick after the city failed to protect them from poisonous trade center ash. More than $1 billion in damages is at stake.

Lawyers for the workers whose cases were examined by AP declined to discuss them, but said the trials will show that workers exposed to the dust weren’t given proper equipment, and as a result are now sick.