Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001

This is the longest-running docket on the JPML's current report, consolidating civil claims arising from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Centralized in the Southern District of New York in 2003, the docket still carries 372 pending actions more than two decades later, a population that reflects both the scale of the original event and the layered claim structure that has developed over time: aviation-security liability claims against airlines and security contractors, insurer subrogation claims for paid-out property and business-interruption losses, and, following a 2016 statutory amendment permitting certain terrorism-related claims against foreign sovereigns, an active track of claims against a foreign state and related entities alleged to have provided material support to the attackers.

For a funder, this is not a docket to approach as a single undifferentiated matter. The aviation-security claims sit on a very different footing than the sovereign-liability track, which involves distinct jurisdictional, sovereign-immunity, and evidentiary questions that have been the subject of extensive motion practice for years. Individual family or victim claims of the kind that drove most early filings were substantially addressed long ago through a dedicated federal compensation fund rather than through this civil docket, so what remains active here skews toward institutional claimants: insurers pursuing subrogation recoveries and parties pursuing the sovereign-liability theory.

Where a genuine capital conversation exists, it is largely on the insurer-subrogation and institutional-claimant side, where claim value can be sized against documented paid losses, and Criterica Capital's commercial litigation finance line is the applicable product for that kind of claim. The sovereign-liability track carries meaningfully different, harder-to-price jurisdictional risk and warrants bespoke underwriting rather than a standardized approach. A structure and litigation brief distinguishing these tracks in more detail is also available.

Pre-settlement funding is a non-recourse purchase of a portion of the proceeds of a pending legal claim — not a loan. If the case does not result in a recovery, nothing is owed. Rates, fees, and repayment terms are disclosed in full in the funding agreement, which the applicant’s attorney reviews before signing. Availability and terms vary by state.