Aaron Twerski — Practical Wisdom at Ground Zero

This Article celebrates Professor. Aaron Twerski’s “practical wisdom” in crafting a solution (with Jim Henderson) to a problem faced by Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the so-called 9/11 First Responder cases. The problem was that Congress did not include these plaintiffs within the Victims Compensation Fund (“VCF”) despite there being every reason to suspect that the interaction of workersman’s compensation law and tort law, if left to operate on their own, would generate a politically unacceptable outcome. Despite his clear misgivings – —expressed decades earlier – —about allowing those who control the workplace to enjoy the benefits of limited liability guaranteed by workersman’s compensation while shifting the cost of their own carelessness onto third parties, Professor.

Twerski devised a settlement that, in effect, did exactly that. This Aarticle explains how the settlement achieved a certain degree of justice by permitting prudence to prevail over principle.