More than 9,000 people who played a role in the massive rescue and recovery operation after 9/11 have filed lawsuits against New York City, claiming they developed a wide variety of health problems after being exposed to soot at the site.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Friday announced the select few that will go first, and perhaps serve as bellwethers for resolving the rest.
The group includes a firefighter who died of throat cancer and another who needed a lung transplant, several police officers with asthma, and a sampling of other laborers worried about their health.
Collectively, the workers have argued that the city and the dozens of contractors it hired to move mountains of debris should shell out more than $1 billion in damages for failing to give responders proper protective equipment.
Public sentiment has landed largely on the side of the workers, but the details of these first cases suggest that not every one will be a slam dunk with a jury.
One Consolidated Edison worker in the group, Richard Calderon, never worked on the debris pile, wore a full respirator for almost all of his time near the site and acknowledged in a deposition that he might not actually be sick.
"I don't know if there's any injuries," he said, when asked why he was suing. He added that he was still worried about his health. "I don't know what's going on inside my body."
Utility worker Robert Galvani also donned a respirator for all his work near the trade center and weighs around 400 pounds, raising questions about whether his breathing problems were due to 9/11.
Other plaintiffs have more compelling stories.
Firefighter Frank Malone, 39, commandeered a city bus to get to the trade center from Brooklyn on Sept. 11 and arrived just after the second tower collapsed.
He found chaos, a smashed chain of command and a sky dark with ash.
"Everything was on fire," he said in a deposition. "All the surrounding buildings were just burning. I've never seen anything like it in my life."
He stayed for two days, digging with his hands with only a flimsy painter's mask for protection, stopping occasionally to blow black soot from his nose.
"I slept for probably two hours on the sidewalk," he said.
Later he returned for another eight days on the pile, searching for body parts and passing buckets of dust. There was no respirator for him then, either. He finally got one when he returned for a third tour in December.
Lawyers for the city have argued that it can't possibly held accountable for what happened in the initial hours and days after the attacks, given the enormity of the disaster.
