Sorry if this is a DP. I did some snooping but didn’t find it anywhere else here.
from http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/09/14/news/silverstein/
Turns out they are/were indeed insured against terrorism.
[Insurance broker hat on]
Son of a bitch. He must be covered by Lloyds of London.
We were discussing this at work the other day - Acts of War are specifically excluded in any property/casualty policy.
[/insurance broker hat off]
Good. I am glad they are going to rebuild. It will go toward healing after this tragedy.
I believe I read that the insurance companies are classifying this as an act of terrorism, not war, and they will be paying all claims as fast as they possibly can.
I’m not surprised that the insurance companies are going to be picking up the tab for the building since many of them had offices there. Let’s not forget that insurance companies haven’t been too popular of late here in the US and no doubt those at the top realized it’d be a heck of a lot less expensive to cough up the necessary billions to rebuild the WTC than to say, “Screw you, it was an act of war!” That attitude would have gotten them on the wrong side of the American people when they could least afford it. (Besides, I’m sure they’ll figure out some way to get a massive tax write-off for the whole thing.)
Funny you should mention, someone sent me this URL to a picture of the proposed rebuilt towers:
I think I saw on TLC that there now exists the tech to build “mile-high” towers. If thats so, the new WTC should be one.
IMHO, of course.
Thank you! That was hilarious.
I read on one of the news sites that only one of the towers were insured fully because they considered it almost impossible for both towers to be destroyed at the same time.
Another thing to consider: Considering how litigious society has become today, I foresee major lawsuits by thousands of people against the tower owners, the cities of New York and D.C., the airports, the two airlines involved (United and American), and even the government. I’m frankly surprised that the lawsuits haven’t started yet. I hope that people don’t, but I think it is going to happen anyway.
I’m not sure that this article is relevant. It is the Port Authority that owned the buildings, and not the lease holders. I have heard (although not confirmed) that the Port Authority self-insures. This means they just took a multi-billion dollar hit, and may or may not be able to rebuild. Regardless of what the lease holders want, and regardless of the lease holders’ “commitment to help”.
mischievous
And when OBL is nothing but cinders, the towers will still represent New York’s attitude to, well, just about everything. (And I mean that in the nicest way possible).
Lovely image.
That turns out not to have been true.
What will be an important legal question is whether there were one incident or two on Tuesday. Most commercial insurance policies have a cap “per incident.” If there were two “incidents,” insurers may be twice as liable on policies that insured the buildings, business interruption for companies with operations in both buildings, etc.
I don’t have a cite for this, but a heard on NPR that one of the lawyer organizations has instructed its members to hold off filing any lawsuits until much of this mess gets sorted out. They’re argument is that there’s no point in distracting the government and others at a time when our focus needs to be elsewhere.
Sounds like the end times doesn’t it? 
Thanks, Manhattan. With comments like:
it certainly does sound like the end times.
Seriously, though, I think that they’re won’t be too many lawsuits out of this whole thing once we establish what happened. Probably the ones to get the most suits filed against them will be the companies who ran the security at the airports where the planes were hijacked from. Even then, I think that there won’t be that many suits as the families of the dead would just want things to be changed so that this could never happen again, and not a big payoff.
“Acts of War are specifically excluded”
I thought that it was declared an Act of War AFTER it happened?
If they caught who did it, they could sue them too.
Anyway, isn’t the US gov going to fund a rebuilding? I thought they just set aside $40B for that…
No. Some of it will go to “damage repair,” but it says nothing about allocating any of those funds for rebuilding the World Trade Center towers.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/september01/congress_9-14.html
Some of the law suits will be against Bin Laden. He supposedly has $300 million. One news report says the US has some of those assets frozen. A judge would surely release those assests to the victims’ families.
actually, i’ve read that later intelligence reports say he has much less than that. but he’s still worth tens of millions.
There’s been a proposal for the new towers to be a complex of four with 50 floors in each. Not sure if this is from the Port Authority or the lessee.
For the record:
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owned the World Trade Center complex. Larry Silverstein is the CEO of the group which holds a 99-year fully-paid lease on the WTC complex, for which they paid the PANYNJ roughly $3.6 billion less than a year ago.
The contract between the PA and Silverstein specifically covered terrorism. From what I understand, the lease was abrogated by force majeure when the buildings were destroyed and the leasehold reverted to the PANYNJ. Silverstein is out the $3.6 billion but may have insurance to cover that loss. The PA can rebuild or not, either with the $3.6 billion or with insurance money or both.
Of course, my understanding could be incorrect.