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Pan Am Flight 103 Legal Team Wins 2009 'Trial Lawyer of the Year' Award For Litigation On Unprecedented Terrorism Case

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 August 2009, 06:30 CDT

NEW YORK, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The legal team that over the course of 20 years, secured billions of dollars in compensation for the Pan Am Flight 103 terrorist victims' families was named a winner of the Public Justice Foundation's 2009 "Trial Lawyer of the Year Award" at ceremonies in San Francisco on July 28. The attorneys recovered more than $500 million from the airline's insurers and $2.7 billion from the Libyan government. The Lockerbie, Scotland - Pan Am Flight 103 litigation marks the first and only time that a nation designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism" admitted its role in a terrorist attack and paid compensation to the victims' families.

The national award went to James P. Kreindler and Steven R. Pounian of Kreindler & Kreindler LLP; Frank H. Granito Jr. and Frank Granito III of Speiser Krause Nolan & Granito; and Michel "Mitch" F. Baumeister of Baumeister & Samuels. All three firms are based in New York City. Lee S. Kreindler had served as the leader of the Lockerbie legal team until his death in 2003.

"All of the attorneys on the plaintiffs team, including our talented and caring colleagues at Speiser Krause and Baumeister & Samuels, are grateful for this special recognition from the Public Justice Foundation," said James P. Kreindler, partner at Kreindler & Kreindler LLP and one of the lead attorneys on the 20-year litigation. "No victory in court or settlement out of court can replace the unnecessary, horrific loss of life, nor mitigate the suffering of the 270 families in this landmark case. But we are truly gratified to have achieved some measure of justice for the Pan Am Flight 103 victims, and hope that the precedents set in this case will serve as a real deterrent to others who may consider engaging in or supporting such acts of terrorism and violence in the future."

On December 21, 1988, Libyan terrorists planted a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers and crew aboard the plane and 11 people on the ground were killed.

Jury Determines Airline's Willful Misconduct in Allowing Bomb on Plane

In 1989, the Flight 103 Plaintiffs' Committee formed and began filing actions against Pan Am and its security subsidiary, Alert Management Services, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. During discovery, the Plaintiffs' Committee unearthed critical evidence showing that Pam Am loaded the suitcase containing the bomb without matching it to a passenger, as was required by federal aviation rules.

The Plaintiffs' Committee took nearly 200 depositions around the world, including Frankfurt, London and Malta airport employees; personnel from Pan Am and its security subsidiary; Federal Aviation Administration employees; German, U.K. and U.S. government investigators (several of whom testified incognito); and several terrorists in Swedish and German prisons.

After a three-month trial in 1992, a Brooklyn, NY, jury found that the airline defendants had committed willful misconduct and held them liable for compensatory damages. By the end of 1996, the plaintiffs settled more than 250 cases against the airline defendants for a total of over $500 million.

Libyan Government Accepts Responsibility for Terrorist Attack

Just as the airline litigation was coming to a close, the Plaintiffs' Committee found an opening to hold Libya accountable after Congress amended the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to permit certain death suits against foreign states, including Libya, that had been designated as "state sponsors of terrorism."

In the fall of 2001, following many obstacles, the Plaintiffs' Committee and a team of Libyan negotiators began a long series of settlement discussions in London and Paris. The Plaintiffs' Committee persevered through long, difficult settlement negotiations.

The legal team from Kreindler & Kreindler, Baumeister & Samuels, and Speiser Krause finally achieved a settlement agreement with Libya in the fall of 2002. Libya agreed to pay each victim's family $4 million upon the lifting of U.N. sanctions against it, another $4 million when U.S. commercial sanctions were lifted, and a final payment of $2 million when Libya was removed from the U.S. State Department list of "state sponsors of terrorism."

In August 2003, Libya paid $2.7 billion into a Swiss escrow account and sent a letter to the United Nations formally accepting responsibility for the bombing. In response, U.N. sanctions were lifted and settlement payments began. The Plaintiffs' Committee also secured legislation from the U.S. Congress to ensure that all the settlement funds would be paid.

After a 20-year odyssey, Libya made the final $2 million payment in the fall of 2008. Each victim's family received $10 million, plus funds from the Pan Am settlements ranging from $575,000 to over $13 million per victim.

The winners of the Public Justice Foundation's 2009 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award were chosen from a field of 20 nominated cases, five of which were chosen as finalists. The Public Justice Foundation bestows the award on lawyers who won or settled socially significant cases in the last year. The Lockerbie, Scotland - Pan Am Flight 103 litigation team shared this year's award with ten attorneys from Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Denver who were cited for their work in Cook v. Rockwell International Corp., in which they held the operators of Colorado's Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant accountable for persistent radioactive contamination from the facility. The attorneys in that case were Merrill G. Davidoff, Peter Nordberg, David F. Sorensen, Ellen Noteware and Jenna MacNaughton Wong of Berger & Montague, P.C. in Philadelphia; Louise Roselle and Jean Geoppinger of Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley Co., LPA in Cincinnati; and Gary Blum, Steve Kelly and Bruce DeBoskey of Silver & DeBoskey, P.C. in Denver.

Public Justice is America's public interest law firm, supported by -- and calling on -- a nationwide network of more than 3,000 of the nation's top lawyers to pursue precedent-setting and socially significant litigation. It has a wide-ranging litigation docket in the areas of consumer rights, worker safety, civil rights and liberties, toxic torts, environmental protection, and access to the courts. Public Justice is the principal project of the Public Justice Foundation, a not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Washington, DC, with a West Coast office in Oakland, California. The Public Justice web site address is www.publicjustice.net.

http://www.kreindler.com

http://www.baumeisterlaw.com/

http://www.speiserkrause.com/

http://www.publicjustice.net

SOURCE Kreindler & Kreindler LLP

Source: PR Newswire

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