U.S. Court: Negligence not cause of 3rd WTC collapse
By Associated Press - Wednesday, December 4
NEW YORK — Negligence was not the cause of the collapse of a third World Trade Center tower several hours after the twin towers were destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a federal appeals court said Wednesday, absolving a developer and others of responsibility in the destruction of the 47-story building.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said it was “simply incompatible with common sense and experience to hold that defendants were required to design and construct a building that would survive the events of September 11, 2001.”
The 2-to-1 decision upheld the rulings regarding World Trade Center 7 by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who had written that the claims by the Consolidated Edison Co. of New York and its insurance companies were “too farfetched and tenuous” to survive. Con Ed and the insurance companies had claimed that a company owned by developer Larry Silverstein and other defendants could be held liable. Hellerstein had dismissed various defendants in a series of rulings.
The building fell at 5:21 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, nearly seven hours after the other buildings collapsed. A Con Edison power station beneath Tower 7 was crushed when the building fell.
Judge Rosemary Pooler wrote in the majority decision that Con Ed’s interpretation of liability would mean that those who designed and constructed the building would presumably be liable if it “collapsed as a result of a fire triggered by a nuclear attack on lower Manhattan.”
The judge wrote that while concepts that would allow an entity to pursue a liability claim “must, by their nature, be fluid, at the end of the day they must engage with reality.”
In a dissent, Judge Richard Wesley said a trial should have been conducted to at least establish from expert testimony why Tower 7 collapsed.
Con Ed had claimed negligence resulted in part because Tower 7’s tenants were allowed to install diesel backup generators.
The fuel burned for hours in the building after hijacked planes struck the two nearby towers, flinging debris into the smaller skyscraper. Con Edison had maintained that fuel from the diesel tanks heightened the fire’s intensity.
The fire department decided to let Tower 7 burn because it was unable to reach adequate water supplies, there were no people in the building and 343 firefighters had already been killed that day, the appeals court noted.
Lawyers on both sides did not immediately respond to messages for comment.
A new 52-story 7 World Trade Center was completed in 2006.
- Orangutan.'s blog
- Login to post comments
The Legal Case Against NIST for WTC 7 Fraud
The above is what we are up against and have to deal with. Hopefully the work of people like Tony Szamboti, gerrycan1, and others can help turn the tide towards our side.
Below is the latest evidence put forth regarding the construction of World Trade Center 7 and the case against NIST
A detailed explanation of the NIST WTC 7 report structural feature omissions and why they invalidate the
NIST analysis:
http://www.pdfonline.com/convert-pdf-to-html/success.aspx?zip=DocStorage/af02e42c458547269825fa1d2730fc9f/If%20you%20have%...
Another potential roadblock is Manhattan DA disclaims authority to prosecute 9/11 murders
http://rememberbuilding7.org/7-facts-about-building-7/
Does not hurt our case against NIST
I think everyone agrees that it would be silly to blame those who designed and built 7 for the collapse. In fact it is good to have it on record that no-one has said the building itself was poorly built or faulty in any way.
But the way the judges treat this case is very telling: They never look at the evidence behind the claim that there was this massive fire capable of imploding the building, they just take it for granted. The details are not important to them. This is what we have to prevent from happening in our case, that is the judges ignoring the dirty little details and just thinking to themselves "big fire = collapse". Specifically this kind of thinking could allow judges to assume that the debunking of the initiating failure mechanism is just a trivial matter, so trivial in fact that there is no need to look further to get some "silly little details" correct.
For this reason I don´t think it is enough to base the whole case on the debunking of the girder walk off theory, instead we need a solid narrative that goes over the whole sequence of omissions and distortions that led NIST to this conclusion. Expose the consistent fraud from A to Z, with the omitted stiffener plates as the cherry on top.
Re: "big fire = collapse"
Yes, I found the ruling's general statement a little confusing: "...simply incompatible with common sense and experience to hold that defendants were required to design and construct a building that would survive the events of September 11, 2001.”
What, in their minds, were the Sept 11 events that were relevant to WTC 7's collapse? How were the events of Sept 11 more extraordinary for WTC 7 -- a building that was, along with many other affected buildings, located across the street from the Twin Towers -- how were those events more extraordinary for Building 7 than for any of its immediate neighbours that were hit by the same debris but somehow managed to not collapse to the ground? I think that's the question Judge Wesley's comment is getting at.
Be specific
Could you elaborate on why you think this is a potential roadblock? Last time I looked, the official account says that nobody died in WTC7. That article is called "Manhattan DA disclaims authority to prosecute 9/11 murders".
U.S. Dept. of Justice.
I just the think the U.S. Justice system is set up against us at this point, or else we would have had justice in this case by now. Judge Hellerstein's name has come up before and I think it will be a difficult process to get a fair trial under the current U.S. system of justice as Simon001 alluded to above. I am happy to see that Judge Richard Wesley advocates for a fair trial and think following up with him would be a good avenue of effort. But I'm no lawyer and I hope those that are can navigate what needs to be done to succeed!
I don't think it takes an
I don't think it takes an expert to see the elements that were left out of NISTs analysis, and their relevance to their hypothesis. Do you understand the evidence in the pdf that you posted? I am pretty sure that you do, and that is the beauty of it - it really is not that complicated. As far as a statement like "Negligence not cause of 3rd WTC collapse" goes, I could quite happily agree with that. I really do think that we have NIST cornered here, and that the difficulty is actually getting the case to court. We are approaching a point where that is looking more and more likely and given that courts have commented on the matter as you outlined above, is that not something that we should be taking as a positive? After all, we are claiming negligence in the explanation of the collapse, not in the collapse itself. All the article is suggesting to me is that nobody has asked the right questions in a court before. Perhaps if we can remain positive, we will be able to win that case in the court of public opinion first, and gather support for this issue, and also for groups like ae911truth in the process. This whole issue has the potential to give our movement a much needed shot in the arm, and NIST a hard kick somewhere slightly lower.
public court already on our side
If we give our buddies at the debunking forums any credit, the fat lady has already sung for the official collapse initiation, because even debunkers that have spent years defending all things NISTical regarding WTC collapses have given up, and I am fairly sure you guys can also convince the court.
But given that the court accepts the debunking of the girder walk-off, we should be asking "what comes next"? How does NIST respond in court in order to do some damage control? Would its objective not be to prevent the court from getting the idea that NIST indulged in fraud, and to make sure that NIST would get the chance to amend the report(and bury that work with another 10 years of BS)?
In my opinion, the consistent omissions and distortions NIST relied on to rubber stamp the official theory are our strongest weapon because the courts, and perhaps more importantly the public, can smell the foul odor of fraud and cover-up and if we manage to inform the public about the fraud the courts would have a hard time white-washing this thing.
There was some talk about the Geraldo show a while back..
Con Ed
Maybe a long shot--but might not Con Ed's legal team have an interest in further investigation, now that their argument re diesel generators has proved to be a dead end?
Judge Richard Wesley
"In a dissent, Judge Richard Wesley said a trial should have been conducted to at least establish from expert testimony why Tower 7 collapsed."
I wholeheartedly agree.
The Hudson River was an adequate water supply
There were three 19,000 gpm fireboats in the yacht harbor behind the WFC, and hose lines were run to West Street with relay pumper trucks there. I've seen pictures of the water being played on WTC6--so obviously there was some surplus water available to fight a fire in a total-loss structure. So the claim that there was no water to extinguish small fires in WTC7 is not persuasive.
After reports from 2 witnesses of an explosion in the building, and after a recon team found an elevator car blown out into the hallway, FDNY had reasonable fears that there were bombs in the building and could justifiably decide that wimpy fires were not worth the risk of fighting them. Then of course when the building fell down and then discussions of bombs became unfashionable, they had to explain why they didn't fight the fire--and the truth was not acceptable. So mutually contradictory statements proliferated.
There also was no need to enter WTC 7 to fight the fires
There were three large Siamese fittings on the exterior of WTC 7 that would have allowed the fire boat water to charge the sprinkler systems. So there wasn't even a need to enter the building.
The fact that this was not done is damning and it is remarkable that it isn't brought up more often. The "city water supply mains feeding the sprinklers of floors 1 through 20 of WTC 7 were broken by the collapse of the towers" excuse is illegitimate and only works because many don't realize those fire boats and Siamese fittings would have been plenty capable of quickly extinguishing the fires in WTC 7.
If you are in NYC take a look at the exteriors of the buildings. They all have Siamese fittings on their exterior. There is no doubt the firefighters knew to hook up to them to charge the sprinklers and were kept from doing it. Of course, the excuse for that was that "the building was going to collapse" according to some mystery engineer saying so hours before it did. I would bet he was from Rudy Giuliani's office from were word came at about 1:00 PM that "building 7 was lost". How prescient!
Conflict of interest...again
Hellerstein should bow out of ALL and ANY judicial cases related to 9/11 on account of major conflict of interest issues. He is neither fit nor appropriate to judge these cases.
Certainly Not Negligence
Certainly not negligence by the designers of WTC7. BUT............
Was the virtual WTC7 brought down by fire alone? Is it negligence to put this forward as the official explanation?
Was NIST negligent in their use of a four hour fire duration on a very few floors where photos showed a 30 minute duration?
Were they negligent saying the girder had no shear studs, when the entire composite floor system in the area had them?
Were they negligent saying that these four hour fires defeated shear studs which then allowed the beams to push the girder off its seat?
Were they negligent by showing figures in their reports that did not include the structural elements?
Were they negligent by failing to report all of the expansion effects on the girder, which would have prevented walk-off?
Were they negligent by changing their walk-off measurements in June 2012 without justification?
Were they negligent in failing to include other structural elements (lateral beam stubs) in their models/analyses?
Were they negligent in failing to respond to numerous inquiries by professionals (and laymen) about these issues?
For crying out loud! If Judge Wesley is reading this, PLEASE see that justice is done. This is not just negligence.
Great post
Can't wait to see them defending their refusal to release their model data because it would "jeopardize public safety".
Diesel?
Maybe my recollection is errant, but didn't NIST determine that the diesel fuel tanks didn't play a part in the fire or the destruction of WTC7 ?
:D