Concern Over Lost Legal Papers

14,000 lawyers lose offices or are displaced

By Amanda Barrett | STAFF WRITER

September 16, 2001

As the city struggles to get back to normal, attorneys are trying to determine the fate of thousands of legal documents that may have been lost in the World Trade Center destruction.

Nearly 14,000 lawyers have lost their offices or have been unable to reach them, according to Frank Ciervo, a spokesman for the New York State Bar Association.

An unknown number of attorneys may be among the dead and injured.

On the day of the attack, Gov. George Pataki issued an executive order suspending all statutory time limitations on criminal and civil judicial proceedings, as well as deadlines for filing appeals.

While that order eases regulations, it won't help legal offices replace valuable documents.

The offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were wiped out Tuesday when Seven World Trade Center collapsed. While none of the workers are believed dead, a huge number of files are gone.

SEC officials said they don't plan to abandon any investigations, but will have to re-create case files by getting copies of the documents that have been filed with courts and other agencies.

"It will slow us down and we will need some time to recover," Wayne Carlin, the SEC's Northeast regional director, said.

"We lost a lot of stuff, though some of it is reconstructible."

The Legal Aid Society, in the top three floors of the Post Office Building, also may have been hit hard. The offices that face the World Trade Center contain the capital defense unit, which represents defendants on death row.

"We fear we may have lost some irreplaceable records, but we just don't know," spokeswoman Pat Bath said.

Meanwhile, the Manhattan district's attorney's office, at One Hogan Place, about nine blocks away from the site, is using a small crew to keep its criminal cases going even though it has no phone service and was in the evacuation zone.

"We are hanging in there, getting the essential things taken care of," said spokeswoman Barbara Thompson.

This story was supplemented by an Associated Press report.