Ground Zero rescue and cleanup workers will receive a $712 million payout from a new settlement negotiated with the City of New York to compensate them for health problems triggered by their work at the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, reports The New York Times.
The new settlement is significantly richer than earlier proposals because plaintiff’s lawyers reduced their fees to a quarter of the total payout after a federal judge rejected an earlier deal for paying out too little to the workers, according to the Times.
Payments would range from $3,250 for plaintiffs with minor ailments up to $2 million to survivors who can link a workers’ death to their work at Ground Zero, according to the Times. The deal first needs to be approved by 95 percent of the plaintiffs.
The settlement closes out a long-running legal saga that began after thousands of firefighters, police officers, and construction workers filed lawsuits against the city alleging that they did not receive proper equipment or supervision while working amid the site’s toxic debris and developed respiratory and other illnesses as a result.
In April, a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that NY firefighters exposed to the toxic dust at the World Trade Center site suffered a significant loss of lung function.