Talk:Larry Silverstein
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[edit] Proposed rewrite of Insurance Dispute section
I find the section on the insurance disputes a bit confusing as it jumps around somewhat in the chronology and doesn’t really explain the policies and the court decisions as clearly as it might. I propose a collaborative rewrite to make it clearer, and offer the following as a starting point for discussion.
- As a private developer with a 99-year lease on WTC1, WTC2, WTC4, and WTC5, Silverstein insured the buildings. The insurance policies on these four buildings were underwritten by 24 insurance companies for a combined total of $3.55 billion in property damage coverage.
- Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Silverstein sought to collect double the face amount of that coverage ($7.1 billion) because, he contended, the two separate airplane strikes constituted two “occurrences” within the meaning of the policies. The insurance companies took the opposite view.
- Because some of the policies contained certain limiting language and some did not, the court split the insurers into two groups for jury trials on the question of whether their policies were subject to the “one occurrence” interpretation or the “two occurrence” interpretation.
- The first trial resulted in a verdict on April 29, 2004, that 10 of the insurers in this group were subject to the “one occurrence” interpretation, so their liability was limited to the face value of those policies, and 3 insurers were added to the second trial group. [The jury was unable to reach a verdict on one insurer, Swiss Reinsurance, at that time, but did so several days later on May 3, 2004, finding that this company was also subject to the “one occurrence” interpretation. Silverstein appealed the Swiss Re decision, but lost that appeal on October 19, 2004.]
- The second trial resulted in a verdict on December 6, 2004, that 9 insurers were subject to the “two occurrences” interpretation and, therefore, liable for a maximum of double the face value of those particular policies ($2.2 billion).
- The total potential payout, therefore, was capped at $4.577 billion for buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5.
(I propose a minor edit only to the following section, as italicized: In 2007, 6 years after the attacks, Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey filed a $1 billion lawsuit ($250 million in unpaid claims and $750 million in damages) against Royal & Sun Alliance Group Plc and its U.S. affiliate and this litigation was subsequently settled (need citation)
Silverstein's lease with the Port Authority for World Trade Center requires him to continue paying $102 million annually in base rent. He is applying insurance payments toward the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.)
I propose to retain the citations from the existing article and perhaps add one or two as required. Well, what say you? All suggestions and comments are welcome. {Jazz2006 (talk) 23:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)}
- Thank you for rewriting the section. It's much more clear now. I did some minor formatting (e.g. paragraph breaks), and added a few "wikilinks". I also moved the references around, to match them up with the facts and information in the article. This is so people can see where we got the information from, especially when we give amounts, numbers, ... I'm not sure I moved them all the references to the correct place, so please check them. --Aude (talk) 05:10, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
