I'm surprised that he would prefer equal payouts. He was so eloquent in explaining the fund as it was set up, although I guess he must have bombarded by grieving people who thought it unfair..
9/11 Fund Disbursements Could Have Been More Fair, Administrator Finds
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 17, 2004; 2:13 PM
The federal compensation for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks would have been distributed more fairly and efficiently if equal payouts were given to all families instead of basing awards on factors such as the victim's age and potential lost income, the fund's administrator said in a final report released today.
Kenneth R. Feinberg, special master of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, said that the varying sizes of individual awards led to "finger-pointing" among victims and a sense that officials were placing a higher value on some lives than others. It also greatly complicated the task of calculating awards at a time when many families needed immediate assistance after terrorists slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania, Feinberg said.
"I had the firefighter's widow saying to me, 'Mr. Feinberg, why am I getting a million dollars less than the stockbroker's husband, who was pushing a pencil on the 103rd floor and my husband died a hero? I must be missing something,' " Feinberg said in an interview. "And it fueled the divisiveness which was inevitable when the statute required different amounts for everybody."
Congress established the fund shortly after the attacks as part of legislation that also provided cash to struggling airlines and protected the industry from potentially crippling lawsuits from the injured and relatives of the dead. People who sought compensation from the fund were required to waive their right to sue, but they did so with the expectation of receiving money with greater speed and certainty than they would have through legal action. The law required that awards be based on individual circumstances.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft put Feinberg in charge in November 2001. The fund paid out its first claim on Aug. 22, 2002 and its final claim payment is expected to go out in the next few weeks. In all, more than $7 billion went to survivors of 2,880 people killed and 2,680 people who were injured in the attacks or the rescue efforts that followed, according to the report.
Families of people killed collected average awards surpassing $2 million and the injured drew average payouts of almost $400,000.
The awards for death claims ranged from $250,000, to $7.1 million. Many families also received charitable donations and insurance payments that were not included in the figures listed in Feinberg's report.
Administering the fund cost the government $86.8 million, although Feinberg and his team worked without pay. Overall, Feinberg said, he considers the effort a success.
The fund achieved the goal of warding off lawsuits, Feinberg said. Ninety-seven percent of the families of attack victims chose payouts from the fund. About 80 lawsuits have been filed in U.S. district court in New York, and none has been resolved.
"Statistically, insofar as Congress wanted to set up a program to divert and deflect claims from shackling the airlines in a time of post-9/11 crisis, the program was a wild success," Feinberg said. He conceded that a system in which all victims receive the same award might not have provided as potent an alternative to lawsuits if the amount was perceived to be too low.
The fund also provided many families with a much-needed sense of closure that would have eluded them during long legal battles in which they would be constantly reminded of the tragedy, Feinberg said. For others, even applying was too much. Thirteen families who have not filed lawsuits did not apply to the fund by the closing deadline, Feinberg said.
"The major reason was grief," he said. "There are a number of people so clinically depressed that, despite my urging, they could not pick up a pen and fill out the forms. I told them they are compounding the tragedy."
Representatives of two Sept. 11 victims organizations did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Richard Bieder, president of Trial Lawyers Care, a volunteer group of 1,100 lawyers who represented 1,745 families before the fund free of charge, called the fund an "unqualified success."
"It was designed to be a magnificent gesture on the part of a country that was saddened by the loss that people suffered," Bieder said. "I have not heard of one individual, amongst all of those people that were represented, that was unhappy with the representation they got or the results. There is always going to be some disgruntlement, but I really haven't heard of any substantial evidence of that. . . .
"Feinberg was masterful," he added. "Talk about a case of the right person at the right time under the right circumstances. I wouldn't have wanted his job at the outset."
The program drew considerable criticism during the first year after its enactment. Grieving families labored over the extensive paperwork required to make a claim. The bond brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 workers in its World Trade Center offices, charged that the fund underestimated the lost earning potential of victims, was biased against single and younger employees and illegally based awards on after-tax income.
Some families complained about "collateral offsets," in which life insurance and other payments from outside sources were deducted from the federal compensation award. Feinberg noted in his report that this problem would not have existed under a system of uniform awards. And families of victims of other terrorist attacks -- from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -- asked why they were not entitled to federal compensation as well.
Kathleen A. Treanor, a leader of a now-defunct group called Fairness for OKC, said the United States should look to the example of Israel, which pays compensation to citizens who are injured or suffer property losses in terrorist attacks, as well as to families of those who are killed. Treanor, whose 4-year-old daughter Ashley Eckles and two other relatives died in the Oklahoma City bombing, said the losses suffered by her family and others like them are no less devastating than those of the Sept. 11 families.
"Any which way you look at it, it's discrimination," Treanor said in an interview. "We have been thrown against the curb. We have been forgotten. . . . It's disgraceful. When someone can tell me why a rich New York stockbroker's wife deserves compensation, and a poor farmer's family that lost everything does not, I'll shut . . . up. It's just ridiculous."
Feinberg, however, defended the government's decision not to cover victims of other attacks in the fund. The Sept. 11 attacks were a "unique historical event," triggering a "universal and profound" national response that justified limiting the compensation program to their victims, he wrote in his 114-page report.
A recent report by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice recommended that the government create a system of compensation for future attacks. Feinberg argued against setting up a new fund, saying officials should wait to see the magnitude and reaction of such a strike should it occur.
"The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund was a unique response to an unprecedented historical event," Feinberg wrote. "It is unlikely -- and probably unwise -- to establish a similar program for future implementation absent the profound conditions which existed immediately after the September 11th attacks." |
