9/11 Toxic Air: Lawsuit against EPA and Whitman goes forward

Remember right after 9/11, when Christine Todd Whitman, then-chief of the EPA, said that the air was fine, and everyone should get back to living and working in lower Manhattan?

Remember when we all thought that was ludicrous?

Turns out we weren't the only ones.  

the details on the flip.

A judge has just allowed a class-action suit seeking damages against Whitman and the EPA to go forward, and tears Whitman apart in the process:

Salon.com quotes the judge:  (http://www.salon.com/...)

"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge said.

She called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking," saying the EPA chief knew that the fall of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air.

<snip>

Quoting a ruling in an earlier case, the judge said a public official cannot be held personally liable for putting the public in harm's way unless the conduct was so egregious as "to shock the contemporary conscience." Given her role in protecting the health and environment for Americans, Whitman's reassurances after Sept. 11 were "without question conscience-shocking," Batts said.