## Facts

- Numerous civil actions arising from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were consolidated as multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of New York under a federal statute granting exclusive federal jurisdiction for damages actions arising from the crashes.
- Plaintiffs included individuals injured in the attacks, representatives of decedents, and owners and subrogee insurers of damaged property.
- Defendants included commercial airlines, airport security contractors, airport operators, the aircraft manufacturer, and entities associated with ownership/operation of World Trade Center buildings.
- Plaintiffs alleged negligent security and related failures that enabled terrorists to hijack commercial aircraft and crash them into the World Trade Center and other targets, causing death, injury, and property damage.
- Plaintiffs also asserted products-liability theories against the aircraft manufacturer based on alleged design choices that purportedly increased vulnerability to hijacking.
- Plaintiffs asserted negligence claims against World Trade Center entities relating to building safety measures, including evacuation routes and egress.
- Multiple defendant groups moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing lack of duty to ground victims, unforeseeability and superseding criminal causation, and federal preemption of state tort standards.

## Issues

1. Whether airlines, aviation-security providers, airport operators, the aircraft manufacturer, and World Trade Center entities owed a duty of care extending to persons and property on the ground injured by the attacks.
2. Whether the terrorist hijackings and intentional crashes were unforeseeable superseding intervening acts that barred negligence and products-liability claims at the pleading stage.
3. Whether federal aviation law preempted state-law negligence and products-liability rules governing duty, standard of care, and causation.
4. How the applicable state substantive law was determined under the statute directing use of the law of the state where each crash occurred.

## Decision

- The court largely denied defendants’ Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss.
- The court held that the alleged duties of airlines and aviation-security actors could extend beyond passengers and crew to foreseeable victims and property on the ground.
- The court held that, at the pleading stage, the risk that hijacked aircraft could crash into buildings or the ground was sufficiently foreseeable to keep duty and proximate-cause allegations within the scope of plausible negligence claims.
- The court declined to hold, as a matter of law on a motion to dismiss, that the terrorist attacks constituted a superseding cause that cut off liability for all defendants, including the aircraft manufacturer.
- The court permitted claims against World Trade Center entities concerning building safety and egress to proceed past the pleading stage.
- The court rejected broad preemption arguments that would displace state tort principles of duty and causation, while recognizing that federal regulations could be relevant to the standard of care.
- The court treated state law (as designated by the governing statute) as supplying substantive tort rules for the claims.

## Legal Principles

- A negligence duty may extend to persons and property on the ground when harm results from risks that are plausibly alleged to be foreseeable consequences of aviation operations and security failures.
- Intervening criminal conduct does not automatically sever proximate cause; whether it is a superseding cause turns on foreseeability and scope-of-risk, and is often not resolvable on a Rule 12(b)(6) record.
- Products-liability claims are not categorically barred at the pleading stage by the presence of criminal misuse when plaintiffs plausibly allege that design choices increased vulnerability to the mechanism of harm and causation cannot be ruled out as a matter of law.
- State tort law principles may govern duty and causation in aviation-related disaster litigation notwithstanding pervasive federal regulation; federal standards may inform, but do not necessarily displace, state-law negligence rules.
- Where a federal statute designates the relevant state law by reference to the crash location, that state’s substantive law supplies the governing standards for the claims.

## Conclusion

The court held that plaintiffs plausibly alleged duties and foreseeability sufficient to proceed on negligence and related theories against multiple categories of defendants and declined to treat the September 11 attacks as a superseding cause or federal preemption as dispositive at the pleading stage.


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