Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Department of Justice Emails Description An account of the resource The Department of Justice received more than 11,000 e-mails in response to the agency's public solicitation for comments upon its plans to distribute the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 established by Congress to benefit the victims of September 11 and their families. These e-mails have been organized here by date. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Wednesday, November 21, 2001 4:25 PM comment- Victim compensation fund My name is , and my wife died on September 11th in 2 WTC. After reading the text of the legislation regarding the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and doing some research into the topic I would like to make a few comments. Please feel to respond to the email address above or call me at ________________________________________________________________________ One must note that as part of the overall legislation, both United and American Airlines were protected from any legal damages incurred above the amount of their liability insurance, assumed to be about $3 Billion each. Those who wish to file suit against the airlines for property damage losses, business interruption, or costs associated with relocation and clean up, must all be adjudicated from this amount. After the insurance money is distributed, any and all further claimants are out of luck. It also makes it impossible to sue for punitive damages because under New York State law, insurance monies may never be used to pay for punitive damages and only insurance money will be available. So, no matter what should be discovered during the course of the investigation and trial, and despite the fact that there had been warnings of a possible terrorist act and at least 4 known plots involving the use of an airliner as a weapon being discovered in recent years, the airlines themselves are not actually liable for anything at all. Similar wording has been inserted in the form of an amendment to the recently signed airline security legislation that would give the same protection (liability only to the limit of insurance coverage) to every other potential lawsuit target except for the airline security companies and Osama Ben Ladin himself. Yes, even though building management in The World Trade Center told people in Tower 2 to return to their desks. While it can be said that they did not know of the second plane, it should have been obvious that as the fire gutted Tower 1 that the situation was unstable. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is similarly protected, although during discovery it could be determined that they did not have an adequate evacuation policy in place. Victims and their families are also expected under this scheme to receive monies from the fund quickly, as the law states that the office of The Special Master must give a ruling on any determination no later than 120 days after the claim is filed. Payment must be authorized in no more than an additional 30 days. The system is faster, potentially cheaper and does not force the claimant to proved proof of any wrongdoing on the part of anyone. But of course there may be a catch or two. And they may be huge. The first one is that in order to make a claim you must first waive all right to be involved in any suit anywhere against anyone regarding the attacks. That?s right anyone and anywhere. You cannot file suit against Osama Ben Ladin and still make a claim despite a 1998 law that deals with precisely this type of situation. And you must do this before finding out what the potential payout might be. In other words the government expects you to accept a settlement offer without having any idea what, if anything, you will receive. Blind faith in the system is a requirement of the system. And that leads to another problem. There are no appeals allowed. If you file and do not like the decision, you are already locked in to the system, you cannot then decide to file suit due to the waiver you have signed and you have no further recourse. Collateral Sources. The law states that any amount that the victim or their family would receive from the fund would be offset by any collateral sources. Among the sources specifically listed in the law are life insurance, death benefits and pension funds. So for the families of victims who have passed away in the tragedy of September 11, this would result in the very clear possibility that if they did substantial advanced planning for the future, they would receive less than those that did no planning at all. And this begs a few questions: First, why should those who did plan ahead be penalized for doing so? What about the money paid for the insurance? Would the premiums be allowed as an economic loss, and added to the award? Why would pension funds, which were monies saved over time by the victim, be a collateral source? Wasn?t this already their own money? The regulations and laws governing New York State Workers Compensation state that any payments made by them would also be offset by collateral sources, though in that case they refer to medical payment made directly by insurance or litigation settlements. Will they expect to be able to reduce their awards based on the amount received from the fund? Will the Special Master consider that a death benefit? Will both attempt to reduce the amount provided for? What about payments made over time to the victims and their families? How will this be calculated? Will this be considered a collateral source? What about Social Security? What about charity money? Is this a collateral source? Is it fair to deduct any amount from what is in effect the settlement of a lawsuit using an Alternative Dispute Resolution system? In the case of the money distributed by charities, the answer is likely to be no, it is not a collateral source. There are many public policy and legal reasons to not include it, and I think that The Special Master will want to get involved with this. But the rest of the questions need to be addressed. The mechanism and procedures required for filing are now being addressed and must by statute be completed no later than December 21, 2001. The Justice Department is currently requesting comments on these procedures at their web site. For my part I would like to make the following recommendations: Do not force people to sign the waiver before finding out the amount they can expect to receive. No attorney worth his malpractice insurance would advise a client to dismiss their case or sign a settlement agreement based only on a vague promise that there is a possibility that they might receive some amount of money in the future. It would be far simpler to have a statement on the stub of the check indicating that the person endorsing the check read the back carefully, with the actual waiver on the back of the check. By endorsing the check, the claimant would also be accepting the full ruling of the Special Master. With regards to proof of claim, the same information and affidavits filed with the city in order to receive a death certificate should suffice. For injured people, there would be an easily obtainable hospital record. The government already has the financial information on most of the victims through tax records on file with the IRS. Use this information first and allow the claimant to add additional information as the situation arises. Do not reduce the amount by any form of collateral source compensation for the reasons listed above. This may require an act of Congress to be achieved. If this is not possible, please take into account the points brought up in the above section. At the very least, out of respect for the victims and their families, do not consider any amount of charity money. Trying to keep accurate records in the middle of a crisis is difficult enough without thinking that you may have to justify these amounts later. From here we can go in one of two directions. The government can be generous and take into account the feelings and concerns of the families, and in the process make substantial monies available to the victims and their families. If this was done, the claimants would have very good reasons for not suing the airlines, the goal of the overall legislation and everyone would feel that they were dealt with fairly. On the other hand, it could become a morass where victims and their families may be left with no legal recourse or form of redress, a settlement that is at best inadequate and at worst no compensation at all for their loss. The image of the situation will then rightly be that our elected leaders failed us and decided that the airlines and their shareholders were protected at the expense of the victims of their failure to protect and secure their own planes. Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-11-21 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource dojW000480.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2001-11-21