Sure, little Damien Sosa was on the cover of People with Flight 1549 Captain Chesley Sullenberger—but his mom and 4-year-old sister are supposed to pay for their own therapy after the scary though miraculous flight. At least that's what U.S. Airways' insurer, AIG, tells the Sosa family, according to the NY Times. While the family has health insurance, Tess Sosa thinks AIG should help foot the bill, "It’s like telling me, ‘We aren’t responsible for this. This is your trauma. You deal with it.'" And when Sosa mentioned the taxpayer bailout, the AIG claims person said "their division didn’t get a cent from the bailout." AIG has offered others passengers $10,000 if they release them further liability. Airline insurance expert Bruce Chadbourne isn't surprised AIG is playing "hardball" but adds, "Even though they’re giving the passengers a hard time, eventually they will be compensated to some extent. There’s no big pot because there’s no death. But there’s still mental distress, and it is a compensatable illness which, eventually, in my opinion, they deserve. They went through hell." more ›

A court ruling has decreased the city's liability in thousands of sidewalk-injury cases where people have sued the city after stumbles in areas with defects that had already been brought to the city's attention. The ruling says that maps made by a company hired by trial lawyers to denote every bump and bruise that pedestrians have come across will not carry weight in the suits because the maps are inaccurate and unclear. With 5,000 maps a year, each depicting several city blocks marked with hundreds of symbols, the city said they ended up with "700,00 squiggles." This decision further lets the city off the hook after a 2003 ruling moved the burden of injuries over to property owners, a move that has saved the city $13 million a year in lawsuits. Fred Kent, the president of the Project for Public Spaces, said, "Is the pothole guilty for trapping you and making you fall? Or are you guilty for not paying attention?” And lauding the court's decision was the first mayor to suffer an increase in payouts due to the maps, Ed Koch. He told the Times, “Hallelujah for the current decision. The money that’s paid out by such claims, which in my judgment are not worthy in many cases, is what deprives the city of spending money on matters that really are needed for the entire city.” more ›

A state appeals court was unconvinced by the Port Authority's arguments and upheld a ruling that leaves the agency 68% liable for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. more ›