Adjunct Professor to Speak on 9/11 Compensation on 20/20 This Friday

Don Migliori, a partner at the leading firm Motley Rice (and a member of our terrific adjunct faculty) represents victims of the 9/11 terror attacks who chose to pursue their claims against the airlines rather than accept an award from the Victim Compensation Fund.  This Friday, at 10PM (EST) Don will be appearing on ABC’s 20/20 to debate Ken Feinberg, the head of the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund, on the merits of compensation systems vs. tort awards.  To read more about the 20/20 story go here or tune in this Friday night. 

Don is pictured at right with Leah Donaldson, a 2007 alum of RWU Law, who works closely with him on these cases.

Here is a story on Don and his important work from Roger Williams University’s The Bridge:

Ten days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress created the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which settled claims of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day, on condition that the families agreed not to pursue their claims in court. Ninety families opted out of the fund, and 30 have since settled. Of the 60 remaining, 53 are now represented by Roger Williams adjunct professor of law Donald Migliori.

Migliori is a partner in the Providence office of Motley Rice, a highly successful South Carolina-based law firm that built its reputation on asbestos, pharmaceuticals and aviation cases (and more recently, the Rhode Island lead paint cases), but is most famous for a record-smashing $248 billion settlement it secured against the tobacco industry in 1998. The financial windfall from that victory, Migliori explained, gave the firm the means to pursue longer-term, higher-risk, more altruistic lawsuits.

“What the litigating families want more than money is to establish the accountability of the airlines and the security companies for their wrongs, lapses, and negligence that contributed to 9/11,” he said. They are also seeking “terror damages,” defined by Migliori as an emotional distress claim based on “what the passengers experienced between hijacking and crash.”

Even more ambitiously – and controversially – Migliori’s firm has filed suit seeking approximately $1 trillion in damages from a group of approximately 200 charities, banks, and individuals in Saudi Arabia, whom he claims acted as financiers of the 9/11 attacks. In that action (which does not exclude families who settled out of the compensation fund), Motley Rice represents 1,700 estates of those killed on 9/11, 5,000 surviving family members, and 1,500 rescue and recovery workers. “You have to believe in this [work] as an arm of social change,” Migliori recently told Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly. “You can’t be a plaintiffs’ lawyer just because it is profitable; these cases are just too involved.” Migliori – a Cranston, R.I., native –said “the electronic nature of filing and legal practice today makes it possible for me to be anywhere and do my job, so why not be at home?” Being in Rhode Island has also freed him to teach law at Roger Williams.”

Click here to read the rest of this story.