National Geographic staffer’s family gets DC workers comp benefits after 9/11 Pentagon crash

Escorting several DC public school students and teaches on a National Geographic field trip, a client of ours wound up on the ill-fated airliner that was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.  The Speiser Krause law firm had this family, as well as many others, contact us because of our experience handling catastrophic injury and fatality claims before the Virginia and Washington D.C. Workers Compensation Boards.   

In fact, Doug Landau essentially shut down the office in September to deal with all the cases and preserve the Statute of Limitations so that the time limits set by law would not be used by the insurance companies as an excuse not to pay the families of those who lost their lives in the course of their employment.  For more on this topic, Injury Board is a great resource.

 Unlike some of the other 9/11 cases we had brought, this case came under DC workers comp law because the decedent worked for a Washington D.C. employer.  We also filed in Virginia, as the Being 757 boarded at Dulles International Airport and the Pentagon is located on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.  The law allows filing in multiple jurisdictions.  Sometimes in the Washington, D.C. Metro area it is unclear what jurisdiction will be “primary” in a case.  While Abrams Landau can, and has, filed catastrophic injury and fatality claims in several states and the District of Columbia simultaneously, the law does not allow claimants or their families to get multiple benefits.  That is why it is important to compare the benefits of the several states that may have jurisdiction over a claim in order to determine a client’s rights and available resources.  

In this fatal airplane crash case, the deceased worker’s family has been paid over $230,000 (not including annual cost of living adjustments and increases) in DC Workers Comp benefits and may continue to get benefits until 2013 (approximately $175,000).

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