The amount of the deal was not revealed, although it is expected to be after the deal is made final, the lawyers said. Cantor had demanded as much as $1.1 billion in damages, after insurance recoveries, although that figure was later reduced to between $400 million and $500 million.

American’s lawyer, Desmond T. Barry Jr., told Judge Hellerstein that he had “some work to do,” because he had to obtain signatures from insurers around the world. But the money had been collected, he added.

The settlement brings closer the end of years of litigation stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks before Judge Hellerstein, who has overseen settlements of more than 90 wrongful death and injury claims by victims and their families, a set of business and property lawsuits, and claims by more than 10,000 ground zero workers who had sued the city over respiratory and other illnesses that they said had resulted from their role in rescue and cleanup work in the center’s smoldering ruins.

Cantor’s lawsuit focused on the firm’s business-interruption losses. Had the case gone to trial, it might have offered the first real legal test of whether the airlines had culpability in the attacks.

Cantor had accused American of negligence in failing to prevent the hijackers from entering and crashing the plane into the tower, arguing the airline owed a duty of “the highest possible degree of care” to prevent a hijacking.