A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has dismissed negligence claims by electric utility Con Edison over the destruction of 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. A Con Edison substation was destroyed when 7 World Trade Center collapsed, and Con Edison claimed that the builder and developer of the building had been negligent. In his opinion in the case In re September 11 Litigation, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein cites the famous ruling of Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (N.Y. 1928), where the New York Court of Appeals dismissed a negligence claim based on a sequence of event in which train guards allegedly pushed a man carrying a package of fireworks onto a train, he dropped the package, and the fireworks exploded, causing a set of scales at the other end of the platform to fall over, strike and allegedly injure a passenger. The Palsgraf Court said the "risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed, and risk imports relation; it is risk to another or to others within the range of apprehension."
Judge Hellerstein said, "It was not within 7WTCo.'s, or Citigroup's, 'range of apprehension' that terrorists would slip through airport security, hijack an airplane, crash it suicidally into one of the two tallest skyscrapers in New York City, set off falling debris that would ignite a building several hundred feet away, cause structural damage to it, destroy water mains causing an internal sprinkler system to become inoperable, kill 343 firemen and paralyze the rest so that a fire within a building would not be put out and the building would be allowed to burn an entire day before it consumed itself and collapsed." He said that said the chain of events that led to the destruction of 7 World Trade Center was "much too improbable to be consistent with any duty" toward Con Edison by builder and developer Larry Silverstein and Citigroup, the successor-in-interest to the building's primary tenant, Salomon Brothers.
Judge Hellerstein said, "It was not within 7WTCo.'s, or Citigroup's, 'range of apprehension' that terrorists would slip through airport security, hijack an airplane, crash it suicidally into one of the two tallest skyscrapers in New York City, set off falling debris that would ignite a building several hundred feet away, cause structural damage to it, destroy water mains causing an internal sprinkler system to become inoperable, kill 343 firemen and paralyze the rest so that a fire within a building would not be put out and the building would be allowed to burn an entire day before it consumed itself and collapsed." He said that said the chain of events that led to the destruction of 7 World Trade Center was "much too improbable to be consistent with any duty" toward Con Edison by builder and developer Larry Silverstein and Citigroup, the successor-in-interest to the building's primary tenant, Salomon Brothers.
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