Port Authority Found Negligent in 1993 Bombing

October 27, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/nyregion/27wtc.html  (Must register to NY Times to view original article)
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

A Manhattan jury said yesterday that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was negligent in safeguarding the World Trade Center before the first terror attack on the twin towers, the 1993 bombing that killed six people and injured 1,000.

In a verdict that could prove costly for the Port Authority, the six-member jury in State Supreme Court unanimously found that the agency did not heed warnings that the underground garage was vulnerable to terrorist attack and should be closed to public parking. This failure, the jury said, was "a substantial factor" in allowing the bombing to occur.

It was in the basement garage below the trade center that Islamic terrorists detonated a van packed with explosives on Feb. 26, 1993, foreshadowing the attack that brought down the towers and killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

The verdict came after four weeks of testimony from security experts and three former directors of the Port Authority. The jury took just over a day to reach its decision.

Although Port Authority lawyers said they would appeal, it was the most significant moment yet in a 12-year battle to hold the agency accountable for the events of that February day, which ushered in a new era of security consciousness in New York City and across the country.

The victims of the 1993 bombings never received the outpouring of public support or government compensation that went to those of the much more devastating 9/11 attacks.

More than 400 plaintiffs, including people hurt in the attack, families of the dead and businesses, have lawsuits pending against the Port Authority, lawyers said yesterday. The negligence verdict clears the way for them to press forward with claims for lost wages, damage to businesses, and pain and suffering.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they were seeking a total of as much as $1.8 billion. Those cases will be decided through separate legal proceedings, which could end in trials or settlements. The authority also faces lawsuits relating to the 9/11 attacks.

David J. Dean, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the verdict "an extraordinary victory." The jury, he said, clearly accepted the plaintiffs' argument that the Port Authority should have foreseen the terrorist attack, based on warnings from its own experts as early as 1985, and shut down the public parking garage.

"The case was never about blaming the terrorists," Mr. Dean said yesterday. "It was about what the Port Authority should have done. They disregarded the advice of their own experts and other experts. They were motivated by money. They should have thought about the ultimate sacrifice of human lives."

Marc Kasowitz, the lead lawyer for the Port Authority, said the jury was wrong in blaming the authority. "The Feb. 26, 1993, attack on the World Trade Center was the act of terrorists for which terrorists alone are responsible," he said. "The Port Authority believes in our American jury system. It strongly believes that the decision in this case was egregiously incorrect."

He said there were strong grounds for appeal of the verdict, "based on errors made by the court during this trial."

The burden on the plaintiffs was to show that the Port Authority should have foreseen the likelihood of a terrorist attack and taken steps to prevent it.

In order to reach a verdict, at least five of the six jurors had to agree. The jury voted unanimously that the Port Authority was negligent. It found the authority 68 percent at fault for the bombing, while the terrorists who carried it out were 32 percent at fault.

Mr. Dean, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said that because the jury apportioned more than half the blame to the Port Authority, the agency will have to pay 100 percent of any damages for pain and suffering, the so-called non-economic damages, that might be awarded.

Regardless of how the blame was shared, the Port Authority would have to pay 100 percent of any economic damages, like lost business, he said.

The jury deadlocked, 4 to 2 in favor of the Port Authority, on whether that negligence rose to the level of recklessness.

The plaintiffs, however, indicated that they considered the 4-to-2 vote a hung jury, leaving open the possibility of a retrial on that question. Mr. Kasowitz, the Port Authority lawyer, said he considered the verdict on recklessness a no vote. Justice Nicholas Figueroa said that the lawyers would return to court to discuss that portion of the verdict.

During the four weeks of testimony, the trial focused on a 1985 report by the Office of Special Planning, an antiterrorist task force convened by Peter Goldmark, who was the executive director of the Port Authority from 1977 to 1985.

Mr. Goldmark created the office in 1984, after becoming concerned that, given terrorist activities in other parts of the world, the trade center, as a symbol of American capitalism and strength, could be a target. After a visit to Scotland Yard in London that year, he wrote a memo saying that Scotland Yard was "appalled" that there would be public transient parking beneath a facility like the World Trade Center.

The report concluded: "A time-bomb-laden vehicle could be driven into the W.T.C. and parked in the public parking area. The driver would then exit via elevator into the W.T.C. and proceed with his business unnoticed. At a predetermined time, the bomb could be exploded in the basement. The amount of explosives used will determine the severity of damage to that area."

Among the report's recommendations was: "Eliminate all public parking in the World Trade Center." It also recommended a series of compromise steps, including guarded entrances to the parking lots, random searches of vehicles and restrictions on pedestrian access.

The report came out about four months after Mr. Goldmark left the Port Authority, and his successors decided not to close the public lot, citing the potential loss of revenue and inconvenience to tenants, according to evidence at the trial. They also decided against most of the compromise measures.

In 1991, according to the testimony, the Port Authority commissioned a second report, from Burns and Roe Securacom, a private security company. That report found that the major risk to the trade center was from a package or hand-held bomb, and that the shopping and pedestrian areas, not the parking garage, would be the most likely targets.

Several jurors interviewed after the verdict yesterday said the mere fact that the 1985 predictions came true had weighed heavily in the verdict.

One of the jurors, Rafael Garcia, a development executive at Nickelodeon, who lives in Chelsea, called the report "irrefutable evidence" that was "eerily prescient as far as what could happen."

"The O.S.P. report was paramount," said Ray Gonzalez, another juror, who lives in Murray Hill and is the director of housekeeping for a nursing home. "Unfortunately, from there, everybody seemed to drop the ball."

Jurors said that they were impressed by Mr. Goldmark, who testified for the plaintiffs and wept on the stand, and that they found the witnesses for the defense less credible. "Goldmark was the only one who didn't seem to be a Port Authority company man," said the jury foreman, Alan Nelson, 54, of Washington Heights, who works in the services department of a law firm.

In contrast, he said, the witnesses for the Port Authority, "seemed highly programmed in their answers," and seemed to be speaking, "from a bureaucratic, organization-man point of view."

The jurors said they had been offended, as the plaintiffs had hoped, by the Port Authority's focus on the potential for economic losses of a terrorist attack.

One defense witness, a security consultant, Robert Ducibella, referred to the loss of human life as "collateral damage." In one of the reports highlighted by the plaintiffs, the Port Authority rated the window-washing machine as a potentially important loss. From the beginning, the Sept. 11 attack hung over the trial like a ghost. The judge forbade both sides from mentioning it, saying that what happened after 1993 was not relevant.

But both sides knew 9/11 would be in the minds of the jury, and the Port Authority repeatedly tried to capitalize on that by suggesting that nothing was going to stop terrorists from one day trying to take down the towers.

Mr. Nelson, the jury foreman, said that while he was satisfied with the verdict, "it's kind of an empty feeling in a way."

"We're talking about a building that is no longer there," he said.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.