Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city will contest a court order to list a retired fire captain alongside his former colleagues on the Sept. 11 memorial.
Bloomberg said Tuesday the city "will fight this in court," arguing that the Fire Department made a reasonable choice to list only active-duty firefighters in an FDNY section on the memorial.
"The Fire Department has a reasonable decision they made a long time ago: you have to have been an on-duty fireman, an active firefighter or officer to be included," said Bloomberg ."That was their decision."
Retired Capt. James Corrigan was working in a private fire safety job for the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. That's how officials planned to list him on the memorial when it opens next year.
But his family says Corrigan acted as a firefighter that day while helping colleagues and deserves the same recognition on the memorial. A Queens judge agreed with the family on Monday.
"If you want to delay the memorial for a couple years, you start opening it up and revisiting everybody," said Bloomberg at a press conference Tuesday. "You're never going to make everybody happy."
"We'll take a look and see what legal recourse we have," Bloomberg concluded, "but I just dread the thought that we're going to reopen every single issue with the 9/11 memorial. It'll never get done."
