Lead lawyer in 9/11 suit admits mistakes were made

The lead lawyer for thousands of Sept. 11 rescue and recovery workers has acknowledged that in preparing some claims, his firm made mistakes - including assertions that people had cancer when they didn't.

But the attorney, Paul Napoli, said the errors all occurred at preliminary stages of the case, are being corrected and won't have any bearing on the outcome. He characterized the mistakes as few and accidental, caused by a crushing workload and a rush to meet court deadlines.

"We are not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes," Napoli said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.

Napoli's firm, Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern, is coordinating lawsuits filed by more than 9,000 police officers, firefighters and construction workers who say New York City and its contractors failed to protect them from toxic ash.

The AP reported Sunday that some of the first cases headed toward trial contained inconsistent or exaggerated information about worker health problems or the time they spent at Ground Zero.

One of the cases examined by the AP involved a New York City police sergeant who sued over breathing difficulties but was later incorrectly listed by her legal team as having lung cancer.

Another police officer from northern New Jersey was listed in a court filing as having worked 300 days at Ground Zero, when work records suggested that any time he spent at the site was more limited.

Napoli said some of the information given to the court early on in the case was "filed in a rush" to beat tight deadlines. "Are there some mistakes? Yes. But whenever anyone does everything, there are mistakes," he said.