All but 3 Sept. 11 lawsuits settled

leonAzul said:
Please clarify where the "$7 billion" figure comes from.
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From the linked article:
The lawsuits were brought by those who chose not to participate in a special fund Congress established that distributed more than $7 billion to more than 5,000 survivors.
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I'm not sure, but it sounds like a typo, since $7 billion would be something like $1,40 million for each survivor. That is quite a lot of money.
 
KDLarsen said:
I'm not sure, but it sounds like a typo, since $7 billion would be something like $1,40 million for each survivor. That is quite a lot of money.
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Do not think it's a typo, now.
from an Aug, 2008 piece:
Their families were among fewer than 100 who sued over deaths or injuries from the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 5,000 others received money from a special fund established by Congress that distributed more than $7 billion.
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also from 2008 article:
Lawyers for the families of four 9/11 victims are urging a judge to reconsider his decision to reject $28.5 million in settlements that he now says are excessive compared with those other survivors received
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http://wcbstv.com/topstories/Sept.11.Lawsuits.2.789329.html
 
Actually roughly $2 million per victim is not all that surprising. Remember, wrongful death awards are typically based on the discounted value of the future income of the person who died, and there were presumably some pretty high-income people working for companies like Cantor Fitzgerald.
 
The fact that all but three took the money just further exposes the "truther" lie that the victims and their families believe in the conspiracy nonsense.
 
Is there any reason given, or any significance to the three that have not been settled?
 
MikeW said:
The report just says they're wrongful death suits, two relating to flight 11 and one to flight 175.
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I was wondering why they haven't been settled with the others, and whether these are the last straws for CTists to grap at - if maybe the families are refusing to settle?
 
Dog Town said:

OT?
-How does one type the trademark logo?
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One way is to use the superscript option: Legaltainment[sup]TM[/sup] gives LegaltainmentTM. There's also a TM character in HTML (™ for you HTML junkies), but that's harder, if not impossible, to enter.

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ETA: This character: ™ (which may not show up properly in all browsers anyway); copypasta from a web page I'm working on with it in it.
 
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chillzero said:
I was wondering why they haven't been settled with the others, and whether these are the last straws for CTists to grap at - if maybe the families are refusing to settle?
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Most likely, it is because they are unhappy with the dollar figures that they are being offered. Most of the ~95 lawsuits were brought by those who expected to get more money via litigation than they would via the Compensation Fund. Among other things, the Fund had caps on compensation and it also had built in set-offs so that awards were reduced by the amount of collateral benefits that the deceased's beneficiaries obtained via insurance policies, etc. Also, the amounts awarded were lower, quite understandably, for the deaths of children, adults with relatively low incomes, adults without dependants, and the elderly, since the largest portion of the total payouts were amounts to compensate for loss of future income.

It's been quite a while since I last read many of them, but if memory serves, the lawsuits regarding the deaths of family members were generally brought by those who lost family members who were either children, adults with relatively low incomes, adults without dependants, and adults with exceptionally high incomes and large life insurance policies that they didn't want to have to offset against any recovery they received from the Fund. (Typically, in litigation, there is no offset against awards of damages for life insurance proceeds, so the offset could be a huge economic factor for claimants in the latter category particularly - if you check out the final report of the Fund - see below - there was one case in which the payout to a claimant was offset by almost $10 million in collateral benefits)

I don't know off the top of my head which three plaintiffs are the last of the remaining plaintiffs, but I know I have docs from PACER from back when there were still ~10 left and 21 MC 97 was closed and the remaining few were transferred to 21 MC 101, and I know I have a list of those plaintiffs, so if I find that, I will try to take a look at PACER over the weekend to scope out which 3 are left, if I get the opportunity.

Here is the final report on the Compensation Fund by Kenneth Feinberg. It's fairly comprehensive in terms of claims, payouts, denials/fraudulent claims, setoffs, etc. Skip down to around page 96 of the report proper (page 102 of the document as a whole) for the tables outlining the number and types of claims, the payouts, the averages, the offsets, etc. The total payout would have been almost $10 billion if it weren't for offsets of nearly $3 billion.
 
Thank you LashL.

I can't imagine how anyone even begins to sit and work out a money figure to accept as compensation for the loss of any loved one. :(
 
chillzero said:
Is there any reason given, or any significance to the three that have not been settled?
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New York Daily News said:
Among those refusing the payouts is the family of Sara Low, 28, a flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first to hit the towers. Low's father, Mike Low, is just as committed to going to trial now as he was in 2003.

"Our intent at that time was to see some accountability for the failures and ineptitudes that led to 9/11," said Low, who runs an Arkansas limestone quarry. "I just want to see some light shined on the actions and inactions of the day. I owe it to my daughter." Were it not for the suit, Low said he would not have learned about his daughter's heroic efforts to thwart the attacks.
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Linky:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/03/05/2009-03-05_last_911_kin_holdouts_push_lawsuits_to_t.html
 
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