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LAWSUITS Grieving family retains a lawyer By Kathleen Burge, Globe Correspondent, 9/14/2001 As they move from shock to grieving after the world's largest terrorist attack, families of the victims killed Tuesday are starting to consider filing civil lawsuits that could produce staggering damage awards. The family of one Boston-area victim - a woman who died on American Airlines Flight 11, leaving behind a husband and children - has retained New York lawyer Lee Kreindler, a well-known specialist on airline disasters. Kreindler, the lead counsel in the civil lawsuits brought after the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, would not name his clients. Yet, as he and legal colleagues were meeting yesterday to discuss the case - after returning to their offices following a false bomb threat at their Park Avenue building - the Association of Trial Lawyers of America was calling for an unprecedented moratorium on filing lawsuits. ''What happened Tuesday just eclipses any human experience of anyone who's alive on Earth today,'' said Leo V. Boyle, a Boston lawyer and president of the association. ''It was so unspeakable, we just felt we wanted to put our values down on paper. Our values at this terrible time are complete unity.'' ''We as a nation must speak at this hour with a single voice, a voice of compassion for the victims and a voice of authority to those who would tear down our society,'' read a statement from the group. Kreindler said they are considering suing a host of defendants: American Airlines, the Massachusetts Port Authority, Osama bin Laden, and even Afghanistan. ''This will be the largest single lawsuit involving an airline disaster in history,'' said another New York lawyer, Aaron J. Broder, who also worked on the Pan Am lawsuits. As lawsuits eventually get filed and wind their way through the legal system, damages awarded will likely be huge. Broder won the largest verdict ever rendered in an airline disaster: $19 million for the wife of one passenger killed over Lockerbie. It's a record Broder believes will be broken with the suits expected to be filed by the families of those killed in the air and on the ground in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. But whom to sue? The airlines - American and United - are obvious targets since they are responsible for maintaining security. ''There's no question that ultimately United and American Airlines will concede liability,'' Broder said. The Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan Airport, where two of the doomed flights took off, could also be sued for security breaches, legal specialists said. ''Without question, they should be sued,'' said Broder. ''The fact is that the agency that oversees the airport may well have responsibility.'' Victims' families might also sue the hijackers, although winning might produce nothing more than a moral victory - unless the terrorists left behind large estates. A more desirable target is suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden, scion of a wealthy Saudi family. Assuming the government investigation finds bin Laden responsible, Kreindler said, ''We would hope to proceed against bin Laden himself and his organization, as well as any country that harbored or protected his activities.'' But even if victims' families sue bin Laden and win, collecting a court judgment from a shadowy terrorist leader could prove nearly impossible. However, legal specialists say, it would only be necessary to find bin Laden's money, and not the leader himself. Kathleen Burge can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] This story ran on page A32 of the Boston Globe on 9/14/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.