Posted on January 12, 2003

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The Year in Review: 9/11 and Victims Compensation

Almost from the moment in November 2001 he was named special master of the federal government's Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth R. Feinberg found hiself becoming a lightning rod for the anguish and frustration felt by families of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Feinberg, a former chief of staff for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and a lawyer with extensive litigation experience involving compensation disputes, announced the original guidelines for the $6 billion Fund in December, at the time answering questions about how he would put a dollar value on the "pain and suffering" of the victims by saying, "I will not play Solomon. I cannot make those distinctions, and I will not make those distinctions. Every life is valuable."

In the months that followed, however, it was precisely those kinds of distinctions that critics of the Fund, which was created in the days after September 11 as part of the $15 billion Air Transportation Safty and System Stabilization Act, said were being made. Whether it was fair criticism or not, by August only 650 of the roughly 3,400 families eligible to apply for compensation had done so, and only twenty-five families had received notification of an award, with the average award totaling $1.36 million before "collateral offsets" for other sources of income (e.g., life insurance, pension payouts, workers compensation).

Then, in September, Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond brokerage firm that lost 658 employees in the attack on the World Trade Center, more than any other company or organization, submitted a report to the federal government criticizing Feinberg’s decision to place a cap on the dollar amount of awards made by the Fund — a cap, according to Cantor, that denied victims’ families full and fair compensation for the losses they suffered.

Two weeks later, the Fund announced awards in fourteen "test" cases designed to gauge the fairness and scope of the program, bringing to fifty-five the number of families offered awards. "I feel that we were fairly received by Feinberg, and I think he's done a fair job in arriving at these numbers," said Larry Stewart, president of Trial Lawyers Care, a national consortium of lawyers working pro bono on behalf of some 1,400 claimants. "I am very encouraged, and I think this bodes well for the rest of the victims who have yet to file their claims."

But as Lisa Belkin suggested in an article in the New York Times Magazine in December, many of the most troubling questions concerning the Fund and the general concept of victims compensation — for example, how did the federal government get into the business of valuing human life, why is one group of victims more deserving of compensation than others, and what do we do in terms of compensation in the event of another devastating attack — remained unanswered as the year came to a close.

Related news:

Federal 9/11 Compensation Fund Announces Award Guidelines (12/21/01)

Perception Gap Between Public and September 11 Victims Widens (1/25/02)

White House Close to Adopting Changes to Victims Compensation Fund Rules (3/05/02)

First Families Receive Awards from Federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (8/09/02)

Federal 9/11 Fund Announces Twenty-Five Awards to Victims’ Families (8/26/02)

Cantor Fitzgerald Report Claims Federal September 11th Victims’ Fund Is Unfair (09/18/02)

September 11 Victim Compensation Fund Announces Fourteen "Test" Awards (10/01/02)