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. Friday, January 18, 2002 11:30 AM Life insurance In establishing the Victims Compensation Fund Congress defines the term "collateral source" and within that definition it refers to "life insurance." There are many different kinds of life insurance. For instance, there is term insurance, which could be construed as some form of disaster insurance. This type of insurance has an associated liability stream into the future. If a victim were paid out of a term life insurance policy then he would no longer be subject to that liability stream. It makes sense to me that Congress meant to include term life insurance as a collateral source. However, I think it should be carefully considered by the Special Master as to whether Congress meant to include some other forms of life insurance which are essentially forms of investment. For instance, I am representing a victim who only owned whole life insurance policies. They were very expensive policies in which he invested large sums of money over many years until there was no future liability. There were no additional premiums due on his policies. Being compensated by these policies as a result of death should be construed as a return of invested capital. This person made a choice to invest for his retirement through the conduit of whole life insurance policies. This was not disaster insurance. If the Special Master calls paid-up whole life insurance a collateral source of income then he is implicitly telling this family that their husband and father made very bad investment choices. He should have invested his money elsewhere. When this family collects from those policies, they are not receiving a windfall from an insurance company having made a poor bet. They will largely be receiving a return of the capital that was invested in the policy. It was their capital. Offsetting an award by the proceeds of this form of policy makes no more sense than offsetting an award by the value of someone's collection of rare paintings. I hope the Special Master considers these different types of insurance policies very carefully when interpreting the intent of Congress. Respectfully submitted, Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-18 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 dojN001983.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. 2002-01-18