The Gap That Got Them. 4 min read. Status: Concluded.

Two Juries Ruled on 9/11. One Found One Occurrence, One Found Two. The Second Circuit Kept Both.

Two federal juries answered the same question in opposite directions, depending on which policy form bound each insurer. The Second Circuit upheld both in October 2006.

By Utkarsh Tyagi. Source-checked. September 15, 2026.

Written by: Utkarsh Tyagi, founder and editor. Ex-Optum, ex-Amazon. LinkedIn
Fact check: Every name, date, and dollar figure checked against the source ledger below
Published: September 15, 2026

Case-file cover art for this story. Original art, not a photograph of the event. — Original art for The Peril Desk. Not a photograph of the actual event.

Two hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Insurance lawyers then spent five years arguing over whether that was one event or two.

The gap between those two answers was worth billions of dollars.

Two federal juries, in the same litigation, looked at the same morning and came out opposite ways. Neither jury was confused. They were reading different paper.

The lease was new and the policies were not finished

In the spring of 2001, Silverstein Properties won the bid for a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center. The property insurance program was still being assembled when the planes hit.

Coverage was riding largely on binders. A binder is a short temporary contract that holds coverage in place while the full policy is typed up.

Insurers up and down the program each carried a slice of the risk. Each slice was a share of one number: the per occurrence limit, meaning the most the program pays out for a single event.

The Second Circuit’s opinion puts the program at a primary layer and eleven excess layers providing a total of $3.54 billion in coverage, on a per occurrence basis.

So the math was blunt. One occurrence meant up to $3.5 billion, in the opinion’s rounding. Two occurrences meant up to $7 billion.

“Occurrence” is a defined word, not an ordinary one

In everyday speech, an occurrence is just a thing that happened. In a property policy it is a defined term, and the definition is written by whoever drafted the form.

Some forms define it tightly. Some forms do not define it at all, which leaves a jury to decide what ordinary people would understand it to mean.

That drafting choice is usually invisible. It sat in a paragraph nobody read out loud during the deal.

On September 11 it became the paragraph the whole program turned on.

The WilProp form and the sentence inside it

The insurance program had been circulating on a broker form known as WilProp. That form contained its own definition of occurrence.

The Second Circuit described the form as treating all losses “attributable directly or indirectly to one cause or to one series of similar causes” as a single occurrence.

Read that against the attack and the result is mechanical. Two planes, one coordinated plan, one series of similar causes, one occurrence.

Other insurers had never been bound to WilProp. Their coverage was riding on a different form, prepared by Travelers, that did not carry the same definition.

Same building. Same morning. Two different contracts.

Two juries, two answers, both allowed to stand

The first trial ended in April 2004, as Insurance Journal reported that December. That jury found that all but three of the insurers in that phase had bound to the WilProp form, and for them the attack was one occurrence.

The second trial ran later the same year. That jury looked at insurers who had not issued final policies and who were working from the Travelers binder instead.

In December 2004 the second jury found that for those insurers, the attack was two occurrences.

The question “was 9/11 one event or two” has no single legal answer. It has one answer per contract.

The appeal did not clean it up

The insurers on the losing side of each verdict appealed. On October 18, 2006, a three judge panel of the Second Circuit upheld both outcomes at once.

The panel let the one occurrence finding stand for the WilProp group, which included Swiss Re, several Lloyd’s insurers and Chubb.

It also rejected the argument from the second group that their exposure should be squeezed back down to one occurrence. Insurance Journal’s account of the ruling counts nine insurers in that two occurrence group and names eight of them: Allianz Global Risks, St. Paul Travelers, Industrial Risk Insurers, Royal and SunAlliance, TIG Insurance, Tokio Marine and Fire, Zurich Financial and Twin City Fire Insurance.

The panel’s own explanation was flat. The forms, it wrote, “were designed with different interests in mind and, not surprisingly, yielded different results.”

Insurance Journal reported that under the verdicts Silverstein Properties became entitled to about $4.6 billion, against a program limit of $3.5 billion. Swiss Re, on the one occurrence side, said its obligation could not exceed its 25 percent share of that $3.5 billion. The difference between the two sides is the word.

What the split actually decided

Nothing about the physical event changed between the two verdicts. Both juries were told the same facts about the same two aircraft.

What changed was the paperwork each defendant had signed, or in several cases had not yet signed.

A policy limit looks like the ceiling on a loss. It is actually the ceiling on an occurrence, and occurrence is whatever the form says it is.

Where the form says nothing, a jury fills the silence. Where the form says “one series of similar causes,” the form has already filled it.

The dispute turned on which of those two sentences happened to be in the drawer on the morning of September 11.

St. Paul Travelers, on the losing side of the second verdict, told Insurance Journal that the impact of the decision, “taking into account the Company’s reserve position and reinsurance, will be immaterial to the Company.”

The Gap That Got Them

The source ledger

Every factual claim above traces to the records below. Links go to the source, not a summary of it.

Insurance Journal, “Court Upholds Juries’ Rulings in World Trade Center Claims,” October 19, 2006. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2006/10/19/73411.htm ((accessed 2026-08-30). Source for: the three judge Second Circuit panel; the one occurrence group (Swiss Re, several Lloyd’s insurers, Chubb); “a separate jury verdict for nine other insurers that found the event was two claims under a different binder”; the eight named defendants in the second trial; “These forms were designed with different interests in mind and, not surprisingly, yielded different results”; “Silverstein Properties became entitled to about $4.6 billion”; Swiss Re’s statement that its obligation “cannot exceed Swiss Re’s 25 percent share of the $3.5 billion loss limit Silverstein purchased.”)
Insurance Journal, “Jury Rules WTC Attacks Were Two Events; Silverstein Recovery May Double to $2.2 Billion,” December 7, 2004. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2004/12/07/48289.htm ((page fetched and read in full 2026-08-31). Source for: the second trial’s two occurrence verdict and its December 2004 timing, reported the day after “yesterday’s decision”; the first trial “which ended last April,” in which “jurors had determined that the attacks, although carried out by two hi-jacked airplanes, constituted a single ‘occurrence’ within the meaning of a binding form prepared by Willis, the WilProp form”; the second phase turning on “the interpretation of the wording contained in a binding form prepared by Travelers, which did not contain the restrictive definition of an occurrence, as was the case with the WilProp form”; the eight named defendants in the second trial; and St. Paul Travelers’ statement that the impact of the decision, “taking into account the Company’s reserve position and reinsurance, will be immaterial to the Company.”)
SR International Business Insurance Co. Ltd. v. World Trade Center Properties LLC, 467 F.3d 107 (2d Cir. Oct. 18, 2006), read in the Caselaw Access Project copy. https://static.case.law/f3d/467/cases/0107-01.json ((accessed 2026-08-30). Source for: the October 18, 2006 opinion date; “In the spring of 2001, Silverstein Properties, Inc. was the successful bidder on a 99-year lease for the WTC in lower Manhattan”; the program providing “approximately $3.5 billion in multi-layered insurance on a ‘per occurrence’ basis”; the exact figure, “a primary layer and eleven excess insurance layers providing a total of $3.54 billion in insurance coverage on a ‘per occurrence’ basis”; the stakes as “up to $3.5 billion, for one occurrence, or up to $7 billion, for two occurrences”; the court’s description of the WilProp form as treating losses “attributable directly or indirectly to one cause or to one series of similar causes” as one occurrence; the Phase I finding that “all but three of the insurers who participated in Phase I bound to the single-occurrence WilProp form”; the Phase II finding that the remaining insurers bound to contracts contemplating two-occurrence treatment; and the identity of the second form, which the opinion names throughout as the Travelers form, including that “the July 26 slip was exchanged as an e-mail attachment along with a copy of the Travelers form, not the WilProp form,” that the court had earlier held “the Travelers binder served as the operative contract,” and that “the Travelers form did not define the term ‘occurrence.‘”)

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