5000 people worth 100 trillion dollars?

[notbob]

http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2002/08/16/lawsuit/index.html?x

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Relatives of Sept. 11 victims filed a $100 trillion lawsuit against the Sudanese government and Saudi officials, banks and charities, claiming they helped finance Osama bin Laden's network and the terror attacks.

i'd imagine that'll come down some on appeal...

provided it ever makes it through the system

[gorphon]

they sued a foreign country and foreign individuals in US District Court? Even if found guilty, what will be done to compel them to pay? I doubt we would invade several foreign soviergn countries based on a District Court Decision.

And they say its not about the money... ok, but if this was the csae why not bring forth criminal charges? These are, after all, felonious crimes. Why a civil suit and an astronomical figure? No. All I see are people getting greedy, hoping to get rich off of a drastic misfortune brought to them by powerful men.

[cheapprick]

The thing is that a great number of these people have holdings in the U.S. which would be seized. Those without holdings would be arrested upon entering the U.S. That is the more probable payback. If they are unable to come to the states for different events and meetings, these terrorists and those who support them, will have a lot harder time coming across as legitimate.

[gorphon]

but will we, or most any other industrial company, stoip buying oil from them? From the Saudis? As far as I know they are still considered the closest thing to allies thatwe have in the middle east. I think this is all much more complicated than it appears, and much more complicated than a masters candidate in international relations could ever unravel. Well, a major part of me has aproblem with any 100trillion dollar lawsuit, let alone such a suit designed to make money off of misfortune... but I still hope they win.

[notbob]

i find the amount laughable--100 trillion dollars? come on--the entire world is barely worth that much--they could have said 10 billion and the effect would be the same. this isn't even everyone who lost someone in 9/11-- its only 600 families 600/100,000,000,000,000 is a lot of cash -- sudan is lucky if they have a gdp of 1 billion dollars, saudi arabia maybe a trillion dollars, and as for the banks, maybe they could get a couple of trillion, but they would be bankrupted in the process, forcing the government to bail them out (which would be quite redundant as they already paid out 100 million dollars to victims families to date)

overall this lawsuit stinks, and the only "people" to win will be the leech trial lawyers who cooked up this fiasco

[mojo-ris-in]

:devil On the surface the Saudi's seem like friends but in truth they have much to answer for Sept. 11. Is a lawsuit the way to answer? Probably not but something has to be done to send a message. As to whether this will send a message....we'll have to see. As far as buying oil from Saudi and the middle east, we have been moving away from the middle east oil reserves for some time and are spending money to find suitable reserves in Venezuela and Africa so maybe one day we can tell Saudi to go to hell.