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My personal connection to 9/11 follows, but to summarize: (1) I was in Manhattan that morning and watched one tower fall through a midtown office window; (2) I worked for the plaintiff-side firm that led the consolidated wrongful death litigation arising from the attacks; (3) only several months before 9/11, I considered an alternate professional opportunity that would have changed my life -- and probably ended it.

In September 2001 I was a young associate living on the far west side of Manhattan.  I worked for Kreindler & Kreindler (?KK?), a long-established plaintiffs? firm that had, in the 1950s, essentially invented modern aviation litigation.  KK officed at 40th and Park.  

I walked to work in good weather, and my walk-commute took me cross-town via 42nd Street.  Normally I turned off 42nd at Fifth or so and walked one block south and a couple of blocks over to use the back entrance on 41st.  As I turned to walk down Fifth, I saw people concernedly looking southward at an enormous plume of smoke coming from lower Manhattan.  I assumed it was nothing and headed into work.

The KK office was buzzing.  I inquired and a co-worker said something like ?there a plane crash at the World Trade Center.?  I initially assumed it was an idiot in a Cessna who veered off course, but another colleague corrected me.  No small private plane, he said: two big commercial airliners had crashed into the towers.

 ?Two??

 ?Yes.  It appears to be a terrorist attack.? 

I raced to the web, which had famously slowed to a crawl.  My firm had TVs in the office, and some gathered to watch, but others of us (including me) found office windows that afforded a clear view of the scene a few miles southward.   Seeing the enormous towers burn in real time ? through a window ? was as unbelievable an experience as I?ve ever had.   It was out of body-ish: a voice inside your mind is attempting to take stock.  ?Is this really happening? What am I seeing here?  Maybe most people will escape the fire and survive.?

Then one of the towers fell, plummeting downward in a rippling veil of smoke.  Far better writers than me have described the immediate visceral impact of witnessing a gigantic tower you imagine is filled with thousands of people collapse, so all I?ll say is the following.  It was staggeringly terrible, a real-life version of the horror innumerable disaster movies have failed to convey, except, un-movie like, the collapse was totally silent from my seat.  No sound at all, except the screech of sirens of first-responders racing to assist. 

9/11 Litigation

The next few months (and years) ? for the nation, for New York, for the KK firm ? were a historic blur.   KK had litigated virtually every major aviation case of the previous fifty years.   With its pedigree and huge mass of clients, the firm eventually served as head of the plaintiffs? executive committee in the wrongful death litigation arising from the attacks.  (The litigation was consolidated in the SDNY before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein.)  

There were essentially two wrongful death litigations occurring: the 9/11 ?tort? litigation (against non-terrorist defendants, such as, inter alia, the airlines) and the 9/11 ?terror? litigation (against, roughly, the terrorists and their sponsors).  KK also handled hundreds of claims made pursuant to the Victim?s Compensation Fund, the special fund created by Congress in the aftermath of 9/11 to compensate victims who chose to forego suit.  I was acutely involved in both the litigation and the VCF work.   I spent many a weekend in the firm offices working on 9/11 filings, a transformative experience (and also something I never failed to point out during my annual review).  I can also assure those who think differently that there was no government conspiracy to ?orchestrate? the attacks.  

The Other Option

Working on a case of that historical magnitude is itself a story: no one expects that sort of thing leaving law school.   The truly astonishing part of the tale is the alternative. 

Prior to joining KK in early 2001, I had considered joining a financial services firm with offices at the WTC.  When I interviewed there, the WTC security procedures ? pre 9/11 ? were memorable.  To go in, I was issued a photo ID card, which they produced by taking an onsite photo and printing out a plastic card with your photo, your name, the company being visited, and the date.  (The WTC had been a target for terrorism eight years earlier, in 1993, by way of an unsuccessful truck bomb.)

I kept the security card ? not because of any prophetic ability ? but because, nerd-like, I thought the whole process was ?neat.?  When the 9/11 attacks happened a few months later, the card assumed a different sort of importance. 

My interview was at Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial firm with offices on the 101st through 105th floors in WTC 1.  In the 9/11 attacks, Cantor lost over 600 people ? almost two-thirds of its workforce.  Had I ended up at Cantor, I would have very likely been killed.  Instead, I signed on with KK, ultimately suing those responsible for the tragedy that I unknowingly avoided. 

Rarely are forks in destiny so stark.  I still have the ID card.

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