## Facts

- Hundreds of actions sought damages for deaths, injuries, and property loss arising from the September 11, 2001 hijackings and crashes.
- Plaintiffs included injured individuals, estates of decedents, and property owners, including some who did not use the federal Victim Compensation Fund.
- Defendants included airlines whose aircraft were hijacked, airport security companies and operators responsible for screening, aircraft manufacturers, and World Trade Center owners/operators alleged to have maintained inadequate egress and fire-safety systems.
- The Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (ATSSSA) centralized jurisdiction over damages actions arising from the September 11 hijackings and crashes in the Southern District of New York.
- Defendants moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), challenging duty, causation (superseding cause), and the viability of state-law negligence theories in light of federal aviation regulation.

## Issues

1. Whether airlines, security entities, and World Trade Center owners/operators plausibly owed a duty of care to persons and property on the ground, not only to passengers.
2. Whether the terrorists’ acts were, as a matter of law on the pleadings, an unforeseeable superseding cause that cut off liability.
3. Whether federal aviation law and related federal programs preempted state-law negligence duties (and/or standards of care) such that the claims should be dismissed.

## Decision

- The court largely denied defendants’ motions to dismiss.
- It held the complaints plausibly alleged duties extending to ground victims and nearby property, and that the harms alleged could fall within the scope of those duties.
- It declined to hold at the pleading stage that the September 11 attacks were categorically unforeseeable or a superseding cause as a matter of law.
- It rejected broad field-preemption arguments as to state-law “duty,” while recognizing that federal regulations could be relevant to the applicable standard of care.
- It allowed negligence claims against World Trade Center owners/operators to proceed based on pleaded deficiencies in evacuation routes and fire-safety measures.

## Legal Principles

- On a motion to dismiss, foreseeability and scope-of-duty questions that depend on factual development generally should not be resolved as a matter of law if the pleadings plausibly place the risk within the defendant’s duty.
- Criminal or terrorist conduct is not automatically a superseding cause where the alleged duty includes taking reasonable measures to reduce the risk of such conduct or its consequences.
- Federal aviation regulation does not necessarily preempt state tort law governing the existence and scope of duty; federal requirements may, however, inform the standard of care applied to aviation-related defendants.
- Building owners/operators may owe duties relating to safe egress and fire-safety measures even when the precipitating emergency is caused by criminal acts.

## Conclusion

The court held that plaintiffs plausibly stated negligence claims arising from the September 11 attacks, declining to foreclose liability at the pleadings stage on duty, foreseeability, or superseding-cause grounds and rejecting broad preemption arguments against state-law duty theories while permitting federal standards to inform the standard of care.


In re September 11 Litig., 280 F. Supp. 2d 279 (S.D.N.Y. 2003)