Yet, in a stinging setback for Cozen and other plaintiffs' lawyers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said U.S. law bars such lawsuits unless the State Department has found that a government provided material support for terrorist groups.
The State Department has made no such finding regarding Saudi Arabia.
The law does not "delegate to the victims, their counsel or the courts the responsibility of the executive branch to make America's foreign-policy response to acts of terrorism," said the opinion, written by Dennis Jacobs, chief judge of the Second Circuit, based in Manhattan.
The court made no finding on facts included in the lawsuits that the law firms have contended tie the Saudi government to funding for al Qaeda.
The ruling came in an appeal of a lower-court opinion filed by Cozen O'Connor on behalf of insurers that paid out billions in claims to businesses at ground zero. Cozen was joined in the legal action by law firms representing hundreds of individual victims and survivors and various other commercial interests that suffered losses.
Cozen and other law firms have spent millions in the high-profile action and have been working on the case almost from the day the attacks were carried out.
They alleged that the Saudi government funded Islamic charities that in turn became money-laundering conduits for al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Absent that funding, the lawsuits said, al Qaeda never would have emerged as a global threat.
The Saudi Arabian Embassy and members of its legal team declined to comment on the ruling yesterday, citing the possibility of further legal action.
In legal papers, lawyers for the kingdom argued that there was no credible evidence that senior Saudi officials had any knowledge of terrorism activities by the charities nor that they intended for the charities to finance al Qaeda.
But lawyers for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks reacted sharply to the decision.
