A few more excerpts from Gregg Easterbrook’s devastating commentary of yesterday: “Now some 9/11 families are saying $1.6 million isn’t enough. Set aside whether they should be receiving anything from taxpayers, given the myriad other circumstances in which Americans die in various horrible events every bit as traumatic and devastating to their families, who receive nothing at all. Assume for the sake of argument that something about 9/11 justifies offering victims’ estates a very large special payment. Yet some 9/11 families are saying very large is not large enough. … If the families for whom $6.1 million is not enough persist in their avaricious desire to sue — and if the lawyers who would get shares of court awards, but get no shares of federal fund awards, persist in their ghoulish desire to encourage such suits–the country’s two largest airlines, and largest aircraft manufacturer, may fail. This will cause significant harm the United States. And it seems unlikely that the dying thoughts of the noble victims of 9/11 were, ‘I hope my survivors really screw the United States for money.'” (unnamed new Gregg Easterbrook weblog, The New Republic, Sept. 10). See also Apr. 1-2, 2002 (Roger Parloff); Nov. 21-22, 2001; John Lehmann, “Rush to file $uits”, New York Post, Sept. 11 (Lisa Beamer and other survivors suing airport screening equipment makers).
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