Amazing Story Relating to 9/11 Victim Trials

(UPDATE below)
Via email from "PC":

At the last hearing I attended, which must have been the 25th of March, I spoke to both John and Paul Keating. The younger brother I had a fairly long conversation with. Tom Foti was standing with me. [can't remember if the man's first name was John or Paul, but it was one of them.]

One of the Keating brothers told me something incredible: The Court will not need any passenger paperwork [ he said "luckily" since they are not releasing it ?! and so there is no other way for his case to be tried] , boarding passes, for the trial since there was a man who worked for the airline who came on the airplane and saw their mother sitting in her seat and was able to identify her from a photo. The same man made a few other ID's and statements. He also ID'ed the stewardess, Low.

It seems (Judge) Hellerstein is just "trying" a particular case if there is a witness to attest to the "victim's" presence on the jet-- in lieu of any paperwork or documentation!?

Isn't paperwork easier to forge than that? Or does it just create too much jeopardy to do so?

I remember thinking at the time this "witness" was obviously fraud, especially as the number of places and corroborating evidence the man in question was able to provide kept increasing. Do not know his name nor even if this trial has taken place.

I found out yesterday that Ellen Mariani is under strict gag order from an appeals court in Boston over the management of her husband's estate [such as it must have been since I am told Neil was a delivery man.] That she has not given Luann a reachable phone number. Her last one is no longer good. And that she is for all purposes in hiding.

My friend Luann went to the most recent Hellerstein hearing. Ellen requested we be in attendance [I couldn't go. It was at the last minute and I had to work elsewhere.] Luann said yesterday that she didn't understand what went on, nor did Ellen tell her going into it that it was an appeal.

She suggested I contact a few writers who have been following this. One, of whom, I remember now, I sent a full account of the first hearing I attended, but did not publish anywhere myself.

There were some links I found some time back to a forum, that discussed this trial issue more-- but the links don't work anymore -- or the forum is locked now. But typical 9/11 craziness.

UPDATE: Judge Hellerstein is in the news this morning, as judge for Ground Zero victims cases:

With a firm trial date looming for thousands of lawsuits brought by workers at ground zero against the city, lawyers for both sides are engaged in intensive talks aimed at settling some or all the cases.

The first 12 cases are scheduled for trial on May 16 in Manhattan. But Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who is overseeing the litigation — involving rescue and cleanup workers who sued over illnesses and injuries they say stemmed from working at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack — said at a recent hearing that a detailed settlement plan about 70 pages long had been drafted.

“There have been intensive discussions going on looking to settlements of individual cases and globally of all cases,” he said.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the city declined to comment on the negotiations.

“The parties have been working very hard,” said Judge Hellerstein, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. “The settlement is complicated.”

The lawsuits were filed beginning in 2006 by more than 9,000 plaintiffs against 90 government agencies and private companies. Several hundred lawyers are working on the cases, and the court documents run to tens of millions of pages.

The plaintiffs claim that the city, along with its contractors and other major defendants like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, offered inadequate safety procedures and supervision to shield them from exposure to contaminants while working amid the debris in a 16-acre area at the site. Plaintiffs seek compensatory damages for pain and suffering and economic loss, as well as, in certain cases, medical monitoring. The plaintiffs may also seek punitive damages in appropriate cases.

James E. Tyrrell Jr., the lead lawyer for the defendants, contends that no link can be proven between the illnesses of plaintiffs and exposure at ground zero, and that some plaintiffs are making false claims. If the cases come to trial, juries will have to decide whether the defendants are at fault, whether the plaintiffs are actually sick and whether their conditions were caused by their work at the disaster site, Mr. Tyrrell said.

The litigation is complex and politically charged, involving plaintiffs that include firefighters, police officers, construction workers and other responders who draw public sympathy. Many elected officials and advocacy groups are demanding compensation, long-term medical treatment and monitoring for the workers from the federal government.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg supports a bill pending in Congress that would offer federal relief to people harmed by work at the site. But the city has, at the same time, been fighting the workers in court, arguing, among other things, that it is immune from damages in cases involving a civil defense disaster or a national emergency. At issue is how great the city’s liability would be if it lost the cases.