Publication Date

Fall 2023

Journal

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Abstract

This Article celebrates Professor. Aaron Twerski’s “practical wisdom” in crafting a solution (with Jim Henderson) to a problem faced by Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the so-called 9/11 First Responder cases. The problem was that Congress did not include these plaintiffs within the Victims Compensation Fund (“VCF”) despite there being every reason to suspect that the interaction of workersman’s compensation law and tort law, if left to operate on their own, would generate a politically unacceptable outcome. Despite his clear misgivings – —expressed decades earlier – —about allowing those who control the workplace to enjoy the benefits of limited liability guaranteed by workersman’s compensation while shifting the cost of their own carelessness onto third parties, Professor. Twerski devised a settlement that, in effect, did exactly that. This Aarticle explains how the settlement achieved a certain degree of justice by permitting prudence to prevail over principle.

Volume

18

Issue

1

First Page

141

Last Page

154

Publisher

Brooklyn Law School

Disciplines

Law | Legal Remedies | Litigation | Torts

Comments

The Law of Torts: Duty, Design, & Conflicts: A Festschrift in Honor of Aaron Twerski

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