New York Judge Dismisses Claim Negligent Construction Contributed To WTC 7 Collapse

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, July 31, 2009

A New York judge presiding over a multi-million dollar insurance case has dismissed the claim that negligent design or construction of WTC Building 7 contributed to its collapse, and in doing so has destroyed a key justification cited by debunkers in claiming that WTC 7 was not deliberately imploded.

Though the ruling by no means advocates any factor other than fire and debris from the twin towers as the cause of the collapse of Building 7, it does reject the premise that the diesel tanks stored in the structure contributed to the building’s destruction.

According to a report by James Glanz which was published in the New York Times on September 11, 2002 concerning diesel tanks stored in WTC 7, “The tanks contained more than 40,000 gallons of fuel to provide backup power for the city’s emergency command center, a Secret Service office and other tenants. A 6,000-gallon tank for the command center, which was on the 23rd floor, was mounted 15 feet off the ground near an elevator bank. It was cited as unsafe by Fire Department officials in 1998 and 1999, but the Port Authority has asserted that the tank and the structure met the city’s fire code and posed no special danger.”

Debunkers have seized upon the diesel tanks as a reason for the collapse of WTC 7 , the only steel-framed building in history to collapse from fire damage alone, considering it was not hit by a plane on 9/11. Despite the fact that diesel tanks being in the building do not explain its 7 second free fall collapse into its own footprint, debunkers have still clung to the issue as a sacred cow with which to try and uphold the official story.

However, a New York judge presiding over a 7-year long insurance case concerning Consolidated Edison has dismissed the claim that the tanks or faulty construction of the building contributed to the collapse.

Consolidated Edison and five of its insurers filed a $314.5 million lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in September 2002, charging that the tanks were improperly designed and maintained. The suit claimed that the tanks fed the fires that brought down WTC 7 and thus were a major contributor to its collapse which destroyed the New York utility’s substation on 9/11.

However, Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Monday ordered the Port Authority to pay Con Ed a total of $37,580,750, just over one tenth of the figure they originally sought, or around e $277 million less than the amount originally sued for.

Con Ed have only received one tenth the sum they initially claimed because the judge dismissed three of the four counts, counts one and two, the tort complaints of the second amended complaint, and count four, the reimbursement claims.

The first tort claim was that “the Port Authority negligently designed, constructed, and maintained 7WTC, causing the tower to collapse and destroy the substation.”
The second tort claim was that “the Port Authority violated New York State and New York City fire and safety standards in designing, constructing, and maintaining 7WTC.”

Both claims were rejected by Judge Hellerstein, who dismissed Con Ed’s claim that the Port Authority was negligent in the collapse of WTC 7 because of a “connection with the construction or maintenance” of the building.
Con Ed’s claim that the damage to its substation resulted from the Port Authority’s

“negligent design, approval, inspection, installation, maintenance, operation, conduct and control of 7 World Trade Center . . . and the diesel fuel tanks therein,” was labeled “redundant and not independently viable” by the Judge.
In count four, Con Ed claimed that the following factors contributed to the collapse of WTC 7.

1) inadequate fireproofing; 2) inadequate firestopping; 3) inadequate attachments between steel connections, beams, girders, and columns; 4) violation of New York City building code as to bracing of columns; 5) inadequate robustness, redundancy, and ductility; 6) failure to investigate and improve 7WTC after the 1993 bombing of Tower One; and 7) improper maximization of office space.

Judge Hellerstein dismissed count four in its entirety because, “There is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether these allegations, and proofs supporting them, would suffice to establish Con Edison’s claims.”

It is important to stress that Judge Hellerstein’s rejection of these counts is not a rejection of the premise that fire and debris from the twin towers was responsible for the collapse of Building 7, indeed that factor is later highlighted in the briefing as the cause of the collapse in the judge’s opinion, but Hellerstein’s ruling that the design or maintenance of the building did not contribute to its collapse is still key.

As we have previously reported, claims that WTC 7 was shoddily constructed and therefore more vulnerable to collapse are contradicted by the fact that the building was intentionally designed to allow large portions of floors to be permanently removed without weakening the structural integrity of the building.

In 1989, following their lease of the building from owner Larry Silverstein, brokerage firm Salomon Brothers spent $200 million dollars on structurally reinforcing the building, allowing “enough redundancy to allow entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building’s structural integrity.”
According to a New York Times report, “MORE than 375 tons of steel – requiring 12 miles of welding – (was) installed to reinforce floors for Salomon’s extra equipment.”

What this amounted to, as the Times pointed out, was that WTC7, specifically designed to be deconstructed and altered, became “a building within a building”. An extraordinary adaptable and highly reinforced structure for the modern business age.
Of course, the evidence to indicate WTC 7 was deliberately imploded is voluminous and, though not the scope of this article, is covered in another report on this story by Jerry Mazza which can be read below.

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9/11’s smoking gun still smoking!
By Jerry Mazza

Consolidated Edison or Con Ed, along with five of its insurers, filed a “$314.5 million lawsuit against the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey, asserting that huge diesel tanks in 7 World Trade Center, an office building that collapsed late in the day last September 11, were improperly designed and maintained. The suit charges that fires by the fuel in those tanks played a major role in the collapse.” Of course, this story was written by James Glanz and published on September 11, 2002, by the New York Times.

Wednesday, several months short of eight years later, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, in his courtroom in the Southern District US Court on 500 Pearl Street, the same Judge Hellerstein who also rules on the right of 9/11 victims’ families to pursue lawsuits [none yet] or hush money [over 7 billion so far], also ruled on Con Ed’s case and award.

To Con Ed, he granted $17,580,750, the remaining balance due after the Port Authority’s initial advance of $20 million of insurance proceeds, which is some $277 million less than the amount originally sued for. He dismissed counts one and two, the tort complaints of the second amended complaint, and count four, the reimbursement claims. To read his opinion, click here.

The original 9/11/02 story also claimed “The tanks contained more than 40,000 gallons of fuel to provide backup power for the city’s emergency command center, a Secret Service office and other tenants. A 6,000-gallon tank for the command center, which was on the 23rd floor, was mounted 15 feet off the ground near an elevator bank. It was cited as unsafe by Fire Department officials in 1998 and 1999, but the Port Authority has asserted that the tank and the structure met the city’s fire code and posed no special danger.”

‘‘The Port Authority has a longstanding policy that all of our buildings meet or exceed code,’’ said the Port Authority’s general counsel, Jeffrey Green, in a prepared statement. ‘‘In this case, the design of the diesel fuel tanks in 7 W.T.C. had the approval of the city’’ — and, ultimately, of the Fire Department, he said.”
The Times also added this key piece of information, “When 7 World Trade Center crumbled at 5:28 p.m. last Sept. 11 it became the only modern, steel-reinforced high-rise in the United States ever to fall because of a fire alone. The precise cause of the collapse has remained elusive, but fiery debris from the towers struck 7 World Trade. And in a study released last spring, federal engineers suggested that fires fed by the diesel fuel damaged structural steel in the building and led to its destruction.” But NIST’s mythic plot thickens.

The fact is that Tower Seven vanished in its footprint in six seconds at 5:28 PM on that day, after its owner Larry Silverstein announced at about 3 PM “that there had been so much bloodshed and pain, that ‘they’ had decided to ‘pull it,’” which is the classic term for an internal demolition. So it really wasn’t the first steel Tower in history to fall by fire. Whatever fires there were, were put out and did not bring Tower 7 down, even if it had burned all day, which it didn’t. What brought it down was the order to “pull it.” The hitch is you can’t set up an internal demolition for a 47-story, steel-frame building in two and a half hours, nor two and a half days or weeks. It takes months to carefully place charges through the structure, so that the first go off at the bottom, implode inward. This is done on each floor, so that the destroyed supports for the crushing weight bring the building down in a six second glide, the speed of gravity, into its own footprint, which is exactly what happened at 5:28 PM on 9/11/01.

Of course, 26 minutes before Tower Seven would fall, the BBC had announced that it had already fallen. A British anchorwoman, supposedly in New York, put her foot in her mouth, with an onscreen time code to boot, and a picture of Tower 7 behind her, as she suddenly went silent, we cut to the anchorman in Great Britain, who told us there were technical difficulties and we lost her. Could someone have known about all this in advance? Could it possibly be a conspiracy? If so, Con Ed certainly was screwed out of its substation, not to mention diesel fuel tanks.

If you doubt me, let’s turn to AE911Truth (Architects and Engineers for Truth), and their noted spokesperson, Architect Richard Gage, AIA, who has spent 20 years designing and working with steel frame buildings. Richard Gage created the 2008 DVD called 9/11: Blue Print for Truth—The Architecture of Destruction.Gage shows you exactly how Tower 7 would have to be worked on to fall as it did. It was the paradigm for Towers 1 and 2 in this regard.

The larger truth is that AE911Truth and its hundreds of members agree this is the technique used for Towers One and Two as well.

Another anomaly that has been largely unreported to Con Ed and the larger public, thanks unfortunately to our corporate media, though credit must be given to Dan Rather as he observes in Gage’s “Blueprint” and repeats several times that Tower 7’s sliding fall into its footprint greatly resembles buildings we’ve seen in the past internally demolished this way. In fact, Gage puts one of those buildings side by side with Tower 7. Their fall is identical.

I think that might even amaze Judge Hellerstein. Perhaps he would finally admit it as evidence to support 9/11 victim families’ wish for a new investigation of what happened on that awful day. He might not have to dole out any more hush money or put gag orders on my good friend Ellen Mariani, so that neither she nor her lawyer can say anything to anyone about what she believes occurred on that dreadful day she lost her husband Neil Mariani on Flight 175, which is very much like what Richard Gage is pointing to.

That also includes the presence of the explosives thermite and thermate found in the dust of Ground Zero at the site of each of the buildings that fell and as far away as Brooklyn Bridge.

These are high powered explosives that thanks to nanotechnology could have been aerosol sprayed into the walls during construction or work on the buildings. Along with the thermite/thermate, we have firemen’s eye-witness accounts of molten pools of steel under tons of debris, running in rivulets as in a foundry, as a result of the heat the explosives generated.

The airliner fires generated heat of some 1800 degrees, Fahrenheit. Professor Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University, gathered samples of the Ground Zero and surrounding area dust and analyzed them. The thermite/thermate explosives would generate heat around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, which could melt the steel. Again, many other scientists have seen the 9/11 thermite/thermate dust and agree with Jones. There is a DVD of Professor Steven Jones speaking about these matters on the first Richard Gage site as well.

All in all, this evidence if broadly seen and understood would change the entire nature of whether or not the 9/11 victim families would get their investigations and days in court, and if they could sue the government. Who could have possibly pulled off a scheme like this? Was it really 15 Arabs with box cutters? Osama bin Linden, with his laptop and kidney dialysis machine in a cave somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan?

My god, this would give Judge Hellerstein and the victims’ families an entirely different outlook, and all of us could reach closure if we knew how exactly and by whom this horrific crime was pulled off in the face of a $60 billion intelligence apparatus, the biggest defense department in the world, an absent (on that day due to anti-hijacking terror drills) network of jet fighters, radar, and the presence of every obstacle imaginable. It might even point to 9/11 being an inside job! Perish the thought, but it might. And you never know until you investigate. Hear that Con Ed, especially if you want back that $277 million you did not get.

The last but extremely important Tower 7 business was brought to us by Dylan Avery, writer/producer of Loose Change, along with co-producer Jason Bermas and Alex Jones of Prison Planet. The story’s hero is Barry Jennings, who worked for the Office of Emergency Management. He was Deputy Director in the Housing Department and a coordinator working in building 7. By his own repeated testimony on camera, he describes being caught in a huge explosion that ripped from the sixth to eighth floors inside WTC 7 after WTC 1 was hit but before Tower 1 and 2 collapsed on 9/11. Jennings testimony was given to the major media plus Avery and Bermas in an exclusive interview.

Barry Jennings also met Michael Hess, Giuliani’s chief legal counsel, not known to him before, on that morning, in that horrific situation. The bottom line is that after Jennings gave his forthright interviews, expressing his shock and disbelief, and which you can view now thanks to Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, he received death threats on his life and members of his family. Mysteriously on August 19, 2008 at the age of 53, just days before NIST’s white-washing report on WTC 7 was released, he passed away after several days in a hospital. Mr. Hess seems to have survived the catastrophe without injury. But then he didn’t give interviews or express opinions.

When Dylan Avery hired a private detective to inquire what happened to Jennings, the detective came back in short time, returned the money and said he never wanted to see Avery again. On further investigation, it turned out that Jennings family had abandoned their house and were nowhere to be seen. This too is the plight of a 911 victim’s family. But please, look at Barry Jennings Uncut for his precious information and dialogue with Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas. It is a piece of history.

Jennings last words on film were that no boiler explosion could have caused the damage he witnessed (he was an ex-boiler technician). The damage included the total ruin of the massive lobby. In fact, he found himself finally walking over bodies in the wrecked lobby and through an exit hole hacked by firefighters.

By then both Towers had fallen, and it was a fireman with a flashlight who had discovered Jennings and Hess, and lead them out to safety. So these events, of all things, remain the still smoking gun of Tower 7, a good reason Silverstein would have for demolishing his own building, and for protecting the larger conspiracy behind that day. Perhaps Judge Hellerstein would benefit by looking at all of this information before he tells one more victim’s family they can’t have a reinvestigation of the events of 9/11.

Perhaps, and this is speculation, Flight 93, slated for 8 AM takeoff to San Francisco from Newark Airport on 9/11, and stuck on the tarmac there for 41 minutes before take-off, was really slated to hit Tower 7 that morning. The Tower 7 explosion may have been pre-timed with its hit. Once Flight 93 missed the opportunity to hit 7, and since Towers 1 and 2 were already down by the time Flight 93 got off, it was flown towards the Mid-West and then turned back east.

As Paul Thompson describes in his 9/11 Terror Timeline, Flight 93, according to numerous eyewitnesses was shot down over a field in Shanksville, PA. Numerous eyewitnesses saw two F-15’s and a white military jet tailing 93. Witnesses heard the whistle of missiles, then saw the plane explode into a ball of fire in the air and its pieces fall to the ground like a “shower of confetti,” scattering within an eight-mile radius. Thompson found no evidence of Flight 93 diving into the open quarry and evaporating down the rabbit hole.

Again, I’m sure Judge Hellerstein would be interested in more than the major media myth’s story, which he repeats in his summary, that is, if he is truly looking for justice and not perpetuating a dreadful cover-up. But it all begins, in a way, with the still smoking gun of 9/11, Tower 7, which no plane hit that day, which did not fall from fire, but rather an announced internal demolition. Con Ed! America! Good luck to you all in your search for reparations and the truth. It’s there. It bears looking at.

Net, net, of all the major buildings destroyed at the WTC, Silverstein’s Tower 7 is the only one to have been speedily completed, built five stores higher, and somewhat wider than its first incarnation. Perhaps the $500 million in insurance profit Silverstein received had something to do with that. Money does talk even through smoke and mirrors.