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. November 20, 2001 Kenneth L. Zwick, Director, Office of Management Programs Civil Division, USDOJ Attached are my comments concerning the notice of inquiry for the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund of 2001. I am neither an attorney nor accountant. I simply reviewed your proposed regulations and processes as an affected party. My main concern is that the USDOJ institute regulations and processes that are far simpler than those that would be required in litigation. I have read many articles quoting attorneys and economic experts about the complexity of determining a proper compensation in this case. If the fund requires this type of legal and economic efforts, then it will be a failure to not only the victims and their loved ones, but to the entire country. The USDOJ must not lose sight that the main purpose of the fund is to fairly compensate victims and their families quickly and to avoid costly litigation for our country. Attachment 1: Re: September 11th Compensation Fund of 2001 Dear Sir: I have reviewed the USDOJ's notic of inquiry and advance notice of rule making for the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund of 2001. I performed my review to assess its impact on myself as a beneficiary and its impact on my fiduciary responsibilities as an estate administrator. My comments are as follows: 1) Regarding the plan to implement regulations as interim final rules, I feel this is very important. The rules need to be reviewed and commented on so that any concerns or problems that would lead claimants to pursue other legal avenues can be minimized. This is important because the intent of the fund is not only to minimize pain for survivors and the loved ones of those lost, but to reduce the cost and pain to our society that would result from lengthy litigation in a public forum. 2) Claim forms must be made as simple as possible and spell out exactly what information and supporting documentation is required. This is necessary in order to avoid possible rejections and delays, thereby inflicting even more pain on the claimants. 3) The Special Master should hold hearings for all claims. This will make certain that a claimant's case is not misinterpreted, resulting in an improper award. Improper awards will lead to a public outcry since claimants will give up their right to sue and will have no right to appeal the award. This would lead to claimants feeling that not only did the Federal Government fail them on September 11th, but also they mislead them and duped them into an unfair settlement. 4) I am strongly opposed to any offsets from collateral sources such as insurance that would be due a decedent's estate under normal circumstances. I believe that offsets for workman's compensation death benefits and accidental death policies are reasonable offsets. However, reducing awards for charitable contributions is wrong, since these grants are intended only to help people carry on in the short term and are not a permanent solution as is insurance. Also, including charitable contributions as offsets is a misguided policy. This policy would take funds from the injured party and in effect give it to the government who itself must bear some responsibility for the claimants injuries or deaths because it did not provide proper airline security laws as confirmed by the hasty passage of the airline safety act. I also oppose reducing awards for life insurance that a decedent purchased to protect their family and estate under the assumption of normal death, not terrorism. Finally, because there will be no social security payments made to decedents, or their heirs on their behalf, these heirs are entitled to receive as much as possible because the government will not be making social security payments otherwise payable to the decedents. 5) Any award should be free of federal and state income taxes as well as estate taxes. Also, Attorney and Accountant fees should be paid directly out of compensation awards. 6) I strongly support the USDOJ's belief that claims should proceed without economic experts. However for this to occur the USDOJ can not request that claimants specify an amount of compensation sought, because to determine this amount would require economic experts. Therefore, to accomplish this task the USDOJ must establish a set of simple formulas for determining economic compensation that can not be open for interpretation. I suggest setting up two formulas, one for personal injury and one for wrongful death. The personal injury formula should include lost wages and medical expenses. The wrongful death formula should be based on a loss of future earnings to the decedent's estate had they not died prematurely. Since my situation involves wrongful death, I will focus my comments on this type of claim. The formula should utilize a decedents current total earnings at the time of death, take into account the years until retirement and escalate these earnings for each year until retirement in order to determine the decedents future loss of earnings. This amount can then be reduced by any offsets (see note 4) and reduced to a present value that would equal the future loss of earnings if invested conservatively. This method should be used for all cases to make the process as simple as possible. Economic loss determinations should not be based on any other factors other than earnings. Other factors such as dependents should be handled as a non-economic loss. Non-economic losses will include pain and suffering or mental anguish and loss of care and companionship to the survivors. Decedents who made less money then others should not receive a larger economic loss simply because they had more dependents. However, we as a society need to help care for these dependents, so I propose an additional fixed amount of money be awarded to all claims with dependent children and parents above and beyond the economic loss award. This amount would address the loss of care aspect of non-economic losses and should be predetermined and not subject to the Special Masters discretion. Other factors related to non-economic losses can be subject to the Special Masters determination based on the factors of the claim. For example, did the claimant suffer before their death, was the claimant directed to return to their office by the building management only to be trapped. However, since the point of this fund is to encourage its use as opposed to litigation, I propose a minimum award be established that can be increased at the discretion of the Special Master. By establishing simple formulas for economic losses and fixed amounts plus minimum awards for non-economic losses, the USDOJ will provide a mechanism to determine the minimum possible award prior to filing a claim. I feel this method is fair to claimants who will give up their right to sue as well as provide a strong incentive to avoid litigation and encourage the use of the Victims Compensation Fund. Sincerely, Individual Comment Kings Park, NY September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-11-20 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 dojW000426.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. 2001-11-20