NEW YORK, June 26 NY-Worby-Groner-LLP
NEW YORK, June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Workers who became sick from exposure to
toxic substances during the rescue and clean up process at the World Trade
Center site following the 9/11 attacks, as well as their attorneys, reacted
with disgust Wednesday to a NEW YORK TIMES article questioning whether, in
fact, their clients were actually injured. "Contrasted against the Pulitzer
Prize awarded to the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Editorial staff for their moving
series of editorials about the plight of the Ground Zero workers, the TIMES
article seems nothing less than a sad attempt to garner publicity for the
paper and the author of the article by attacking the workers' integrity and
that of the dedicated medical professionals who treat them," said John
Walcott, a retired New York City Police Detective who suffers from leukemia
his physicians have tied to Ground Zero exposure. Marc Jay Bern, a Partner at
Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern, LLP, one of two firms appointed by the
United States District Court as Co-Liaison Counsel for the injured workers,
says that a close review of the City's and its attorneys' claims in minimizing
the impact of Ground Zero exposures demonstrates that the City's lead counsel,
James E. Tyrrell, Jr., of Patton Boggs, LLP, has misled the Court in his
characterization of the workers' illnesses and their severity.
Such life threatening diseases as Asthma and Sarcoidosis have been
diagnosed following the workers' time at Ground Zero, and have no cure.
"Anybody with access to the internet or a medical dictionary can tell you that
Asthma and Sarcoidosis are incurable, permanent conditions that may be
managed, but are never considered 'cured,'" said Bern, who added "these
diseases, along with other well-documented Ground Zero-related illnesses like
pulmonary fibrosis and silicosis, are progressive and disabling." As a
result, the plaintiffs and their counsel contend, the City cannot reasonably
argue that the workers who are currently having only symptoms of the diseases
will not progress as the disease advances to serious impairment or even death
as the years pass.
The City of New York's own studies show that the workers' illnesses have
been medically tied to their Ground Zero exposures to dust, smoke and
particulate matter including concrete dust and multiple chemical agents
created by the burning of furniture, carpeting and office equipment. "If you
spend just a few minutes in a room with former Ground Zero workers, many of
whom were huge strapping firefighters, police officers and construction
workers in the prime of their lives on 9/11 and who are now gasping for breath
as they speak, some of them dependent on portable oxygen tanks just to leave
their homes, you will understand that the City's attack on these people is
truly obscene," said Bern. He noted that TIMES writer Anthony DePalma was
provided much of the medical evidence supporting the workers' claims in recent
months while he has been working on a series of 9/11-related articles for the
TIMES, and therefore knows that the impugning of the workers' claims of
illness and disability in his article was baseless.
The City's conduct is "disgraceful" to the ground zero workers, and the
indisputable ill health that they suffer because they were not provided proper
respiratory protection that the city lawyers have chosen to assess incomplete
information and provide inaccurate and manipulated data. These actions are a
thinly-veiled attempt to lessen the City's legal, moral and financial
responsibility to provide desperately needed benefits and compensation to
thousands of workers who suffer respiratory and gastrointestinal injury,
cardiac problems, cancer and even death. Bern noted that "the City and the
contractor defendants were given $1 billion by Congress to pay the claims of
these ill workers in addition to a legislative cap of $350,000,000.00 and have
paid no claims for respiratory illness. Instead of using that money to help
the Ground Zero workers, the City has instead chosen to pay their lawyers and
administrators over $170 million thus far to fight these heroes."
Bern said that "contrary to the City's lawyers' biased review of selected
records for selected workers, we are in the final states of analyzing with our
experts, the medical files, employment files, interviews and testimony of
10,000 workers so that we can provide the Court an accurate summary of the
various ground zero related illnesses." Bern said their findings would be
released shortly. He also noted that the incidences of Ground Zero related
diseases were published in 2007 by Mt. Sinai Medical Center physicians
specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of environmental toxins in the
workplace, including the World Trade Center disaster site. That study,
specifically addressing patients seen at the World Trade Center Health Effects
Treatment Program, showed that 78.5% of the workers seen at the program had
upper airway diseases, 57.6% had gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) and
48.9% had lower airway disease, all of which can be extremely debilitating.
As Bern noted, "it's worth remembering that the City of New York still
refuses to acknowledge that hero cop James Zadroga died from the result of his
Ground Zero exposures, despite the medical examiner's express findings to that
effect." "Given the City's track record of paying hundreds of millions of
dollars to its lawyers to fight these heroes, men and women who put their own
life and their families' futures on the line when the City needed them, it is
hardly surprising that they would allow their attorneys to continue this
shameful attack on the City's heroes by making such ridiculous allegations to
the NEW YORK TIMES," Bern concluded.
Press Release Contact Information:
Marc Jay Bern
Partner
Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern, LLP
(516) 361-4909
MJBern@napolibern.com
SOURCE Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern
