No more compensation due World Trade Center developer: Judge
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NEW YORK (Reuters) — New York property developer Larry Silverstein is not entitled to funds that insurers of his World Trade Center properties won from airlines over the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Mr. Silverstein's World Trade Center Properties sued QBE International Insurance Ltd and other insurers in 2010, after they won a $1.2 billion settlement with airlines and airport security companies.
Mr. Silverstein had already settled his own claims against the insurers for more than $4 billion. He subsequently argued that the insurers, under the terms of their policies, were required to turn over whatever they recovered from the airlines.
In his ruling on Wednesday, however, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote that Mr. Silverstein's World Trade Center Properties had already been “fully compensated” by its insurers.
Judge Hellerstein ruled similarly in July, when he decided Mr. Silverstein could not recover billions of dollars from airlines — including United Airlines, now United Continental Holdings Inc., and American Airlines and its parent AMR Corp. — because the insurance companies had already compensated his company.
“I am fully familiar with the arguments raised by plaintiffs, and nothing plaintiffs have raised in their briefing in this case or any other case has persuaded me to change my holdings,” Judge Hellerstein wrote in the five-page ruling on Wednesday.
A spokesman for Mr. Silverstein declined to comment.
