Schiro called Kenneth Feinberg, who had overseen the resolution of 5,300 claims for the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, with only 94 going to litigation.
He said before his case got to the litigation stage, he had been told by a member of the tax counsel network – the ATO's legal advice area – that "this is not going to litigation, we'll end up settling it".
Their objective was to go the litigation route".
"And that's without any court costs if it goes into litigation".
"I don't want to go through litigation for eight years," said Shelli Wright, 33, of Toms River, N.J.
He added, "All it takes is one unhappy neighbor, and the project can go into litigation for years".
"One thing that became painfully apparent to me during this period was that their objective was to go the litigation route," he said.
A spokeswoman for the archdiocese, Donna M. Morrissey, said, "If a plaintiff's counsel makes a decision that they want to go through litigation we feel we're obligated to defend ourselves".
"For elected officials in a collaborative process running a city, the goal is to achieve objectives without having to go to litigation," said Randy M. Mastro, a former deputy mayor who has been involved in numerous lawsuits involving, and usually against, the city.
But the lawyer familiar with the Clinton administration's stance said they had decided that "it was better to err on the side of giving money to people who might not qualify if they went through litigation than to deny money to people who actually deserve it".
