My co-blogger David mentions the very interesting jury verdict in the civil case about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the surprising decision holding the Port Authority 68% responsible for the attack. I don't work in any area of law with any remote connection to this case, but my amateurish reaction is that the oddity of the verdict depends in part on the specific legal standard the jury was asked to apply.

  Specifically, I'm not sure I know what it means to assign a victim partial responsibility for an intentional act. The bombing was a planned, purposeful attack, while the Port Authority was at most negligent in failing to defend its property more carefully. But how do you apportion blame between an intentional act and a negligent defense? Is the question who is responsible for the act being attempted? The likelihood that various defenses would have led the wrongdoers to give up and hit another target? The costs of different acts the wrongdoers might have attempted if deterred by better defenses? The extent of the harm following from the attack? Or something else?

  My apologies if the answers to these questions are obvious to others. I haven't followed this trial, and I don't know anything about this area of law. But it seems to me that the jury's answer may seem odd because the jury was required to answer a perplexing set of legal questions.