June 9, 2009
By Chris Mondics
Inquirer Staff Writer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
At the moment the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 10:28
a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Sharon Premoli was scrambling up an escalator from the
below-ground concourse toward the street with dozens of other office workers
in a desperate bid to escape.
She looked behind her and saw two things that are burned forever in her memory:
A human chain of evacuees riding the escalator and a boiling cloud of dust and
debris racing toward them.
The force of that swirling storm picked her up and threw her into nearby storefront.
After she awoke, she said, she soon realized she was lying on the lifeless body
of a man and that she was covered with his blood.
"I remember taking my nails and scraping my tongue to remove the debris
from my mouth," said Premoli, at the time a vice president for development
with a financial services software company based in the North Tower. "I
tried to get up and I realized I was lying on the body, and I am profoundly
haunted by that."
Strip away all the arcana and legal angels dancing on heads of pins, and Premoli
is the human face of litigation alleging Saudi Arabia financed the 9/11 hijackers.
She is one of 6,000 World Trade Center victims and their families who have
charged in lawsuits that the government of Saudi Arabia or its officials funded
Islamic charities that in turn helped finance the 9/11 attacks. The Saudis did
so even as U.S. government officials warned that their money was ending up in
the wrong hands, the lawsuit charges.
The case is likely to reach a critical juncture this month when the U.S. Supreme
Court is expected to decide whether to hear arguments on Saudi Arabia’s legal
exposure.
The firm leading the appeal of lower court rulings dismissing Saudi Arabia
as a defendant is Cozen O’Connor of Center City. It is representing insurers
that suffered damages at ground zero along with appellate lawyers from the Washington
office of Sidley Austin. Premoli’s firm is Motley Rice, a leading plaintiffs’
firm based in South Carolina that came to prominence, and significant wealth,
in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s.
"All we are asking for is our day in court," said Premoli, who has
moved to Vermont and now works as a consultant.
It seems like a simple premise, in fact the very pillar of the American civil
justice system.
Yet by law and tradition, the United States government has long made such lawsuits
against foreign governments excruciatingly difficult.
The hurdle for the plaintiffs, both insurers and individual victims, isn’t
simply facts and law, but also the political dimensions.
Saudi Arabia is one of the United States’ most important allies in the Middle
East. It has been a forward staging area for the U.S. military, deemed an important
counterweight to Iran’s regional ambitions, seen as a huge source of energy,
and a very big purchaser of American goods and services.
U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, in a friend-of-the-court brief filed May
29, said political questions lie at the heart of laws governing lawsuits against
foreign governments.
And she emphatically urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case. Kagan asserted
that there were no significant unresolved issues of law, the baseline standard
for Supreme Court review, that would compel the high court to take the case.
Yet, if the defendants in this case were U.S. citizens, it is possible that
the litigation would have been settled long ago.
The case includes uncontroverted information that Saudi government supported
charities suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies of funneling funds to al-Qaeda
as it grew from a regional threat to a pivotal player in the Balkans conflicts
in recent years and a huge source of international terrorism.
Two delegations of U.S. officials traveled to Riyadh, one in 1999 and the other
a year later, giving the Saudis a list of suspect charities, banks, money exchanges
and terrorism financiers. According to senior American government officials,
the Saudis did nothing.
Kagan’s May 29 brief, representing the opinion of the Obama administration,
was significant because the Supreme Court in most cases follows the solicitor
general’s lead.
But not always.
One threshold requirement for Supreme Court review is whether the law on a
given subject is unsettled, and it is conceivable that the court may make that
call in this case. That is because two separate appellate rulings holding foreign
governments responsible for killings in the United States seem to conflict with
another appellate court ruling last year throwing out the lawsuit against Saudi
Arabia.
The plaintiffs say those decisions make clear that foreign governments, even
strong allies of the U.S., can be sued. And, they maintain, that is the only
way 9/11 victims will achieve justice.
"Why would the Obama administration give less weight to the principles
of justice, transparency, and security and more to the pleadings of a foreign
government?" asked Tom Burnett Sr., whose son, Tom Jr., died when United
Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2001.
He added of Kagan’s brief in the case, "It strikes a blow against the
public’s right to know who financed and supported" the 9/11 attacks.
Law Review: Go to http://go.philly.com/cozen for more on the suit, including
an Inquirer series.