"a dramatic success’--121--23/10dec22/23 A Dramatic Success’As...

"a dramatic success’--121--23/10dec22/23 A Dramatic Success’
As the clock struck midnight Monday, more than 95 percent of families had filed death claims, but the work’s not over—the fund now has just six months to pay out thousands of claims
Mary Fetchet holds a memorial card showing her son, Brad, who died in the attacks
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jennifer Barrett
NewsweekDec. 23 - Brad Fetchet’s life was cut short just before his 25th birthday when on Sept. 11 a hijacked plane crashed into his office in the World Trade Center. More than two years after the terror attacks, his mother, Mary, still could not bring herself to fill out the form required to claim compensation for his death. It was tough enough getting through the anniversaries of the attacks, then her son’s birthday in November, and now Thanksgiving and Christmas without him. The emotions remain so raw that she says she still gets choked up just seeing his signature on old pay stubs.

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So she put off filing the initial form with the Victim Compensation Fund, created by Congress in 2001 to cover victims’ claims and dissuade them from pursuing lawsuits against the airlines, as long as she could. But finally, with just days to spare before the Dec. 22 deadline, Fetchet submitted the most basic information required—like her son’s name, their relation, and her contact information. “We still haven’t been able to do the emotional piece of it,” she says. “The most difficult thing I think is to go through pictures and develop a profile of my son. I don’t have the strength to do that right now.”

She is not alone.

Literally hundreds of other families who lost loved ones in the attacks filed with just days—or, in some cases, hours—to spare before Monday’s midnight deadline. A week ago, about 4,675 claims had been filed, meaning 30 percent of the attack victims had yet to file. There were concerns that hundreds of victims and their families might not meet the deadline. Last month, members of New York's Congressional delegation were worried enough to push for a one-year extension of the fund deadline, but the proposal never made it past the Congressional committee.

By late Monday, however, all but an estimated 150 eligible families had filed death claims, according to Justice Department officials. In total, more than 6,450 death and injury claims were received by midnight, hundreds of them arriving by hand or by mail that day. And more could still arrive (as long as they were postmarked Dec. 22 or earlier, mailed claims will still be accepted). That means at least 95 percent of those eligible had submitted claims on behalf of loved ones killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, or aboard the airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania. The recent flood of fund claims came thanks in part to last-ditch efforts by the fund’s special master, Kenneth Feinberg, as well as a network of lawyers and 9/11 advocacy groups to reach out to all eligible families and injury victims through workshops, nationwide tours, and a simpler, streamlined process for filing.

“I don’t believe there is a family located in the United States, or internationally, that does not know about this program. We have done everything feasible and humanly possible to reach every family,” says Feinberg, who had been predicting at least 90 percent participation for several months. “I think the program has been a dramatic success and will prove to be a model of how something horrible and tragic like this can be dealt with in a free society,” he says.

But for the hundreds of families who waited until the last minute to make their decision, there’s still a lot of work ahead. The basic application form many submitted did not require additional financial records or other paperwork that will eventually be needed to determine the amount of compensation awarded. Applicants have just 30 days to submit that information. Some families say that’s not enough. “For people who are submitting the bare minimum now, it’s not just hard, it’s impossible to get all the information together in a few weeks,” says Fetchet.

But Feinberg is unlikely to move that deadline back. He has his own to worry about. “We have six months to process all the claims,” says Feinberg. “I promised Congress we will get it done by June 15, and we will get it done.”


Frank Franklin II / AP
Kenneth Feinberg calls the fund `a dramatic success'
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That won’t be easy. By midnight Monday, the fund had dispersed about $1.62 billion to 1,167 claimants, less that one-fifth of the total death and injury claims submitted. And many of those filed in the past week will require hearings and additional information, which could drag the process out for several weeks. “It’s a major challenge,” concedes Feinberg.

That’s true for the families as well. In some cases, family members say they put off filing because they were so overwhelmed by the financial paperwork required to determine a compensation amount, including: tax records, pay stubs, bank deposit slips, and complicated tables showing their loved one’s future earnings potential. Others wanted to contemplate other legal options—by the deadline, about 70 families had opted to forego their rights to file with the fund in favor of pursuing a wrongful death case in court against the airlines and other defendants. But by far, the majority of those who put off filing with the fund say they did so for sentimental reasons—as Feinberg learned as he toured the country meeting with families.

“I underestimated the degree of emotion involved with these families,” he says. “This fund was established so soon after September 11 that it didn’t allow any leeway for emotion to be dealt with and replaced by calm reaction. I have never had a more challenging emotional environment for resolving claims.”

Carol Bockner, director of the City Bar Fund's September 11th Legal Relief Initiative, says her group helped about 500 applicants file with the fund and many of them waited until recently to do so. “A lot of people didn’t want to make the decision because it’s really the end of the process,” she says. “You do your best to impress upon the family of the victim they should do what they feel comfortable doing but let them know that there will come a time when they made a choice by letting the deadline pass.”

John C. Jeannopoulos, director of attorney services at Trial Lawyers Care, another group of attorneys formed to provide free assistance for Sept. 11 victims and their families, witnessed the same reluctance among families. On Monday, with hours remaining before the deadline, one attorney from Trial Lawyers Care dropped off 200 claims.

“Part of keeping a memory alive is fighting for that person. That’s why some hang on, because when they go to the fund and a decision is made on how much their child or spouse was worth, they feel they are somehow closing the chapter on them,” said Jeannopoulos.

The process of applying for compensation, particularly in the many cases in which the applicants have asked for a hearing before the special master, has also been more time-consuming than even experienced lawyers had anticipated.

“Initially, many [attorneys] thought of it as simply assisting these people with their applications, but it has turned out to be more like preparing someone for a wrongful death case because a lot of our lawyers are spending 150 hours or more on these cases,” says Jeannopoulos, who estimates as many as 1,000 families sought help from Trial Lawyers Care. “It’s all about advocating for these people and there’s no precedent, nothing to rely on, so we can’t leave any stone unturned.”

That’s particularly true in injury cases, in which the claimants must prove not only that they were at the site of one of the attacks that morning but also that their injuries were a direct result of the attacks and were documented within days of Sept. 11.

Laurie Bezeg, a 51-year-old New Jersey nurse, is among the 3,624 injured who have filed claims. She actually submitted her application in the summer, but has not yet heard back. In the meantime, she says she has paid out about $6,000 in co-pay to cover doctors' visits and four operations on her wrists and knees.

Bezeg, who had just reported for her first day of work at the Port Authority health center in the World Trade Center when the first plane sliced into her building on Sept. 11, walked 62 flights of stairs to escape the burning building—stopping to help a woman having an asthma attack and later to guide two heavyset women who were having trouble negotiating the many stairs. She ended up walking all the way to the Brooklyn Piers, where her husband worked. And she went back to work herself two days after the attack, helping to treat emergency personnel and volunteers. By then, her wrists were hurting so badly that she could hardly write down patient notes, and a doctor she worked with noticed she was limping. She had huge bags under her eyes; she had hardly slept since the attack. It was not until a week later that she went to see a therapist, who diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

A trip to her doctor and an orthopedic surgeon confirmed that the effects of her experience on Sept. 11 were not just psychological. She had damaged the medial nerve in her wrists, and ended up having surgery on both wrists. Orthoscopic surgery on her left knee revealed damage so bad that she had to have her left knee replaced last month. Surgery is also scheduled for her right knee. The doctors thought the pressure of walking down so many flights of stairs, many of them while helping to support two other women, along with the long walk to her husband’s office might have caused the initial injuries. And the hours spent on her feet in the days after the attacks aggravated them.

So far, pay-outs for injuries have varied more than death claims, ranging from $500 to $7.9 million. Bezeg is just hoping for enough to cover her co-pay for the surgeries and continued treatment she is receiving. She is still waiting for her hearing before Feinberg, but she’s hopeful it will happen soon; according to the Justice Department, Feinberg has already set up dozens of hearings.

And for families like the Fetchets, those hearings, though emotional, can also prove to be cathartic. Families often bring in photographs, as Mary Fetchet plans to do, as well as videotapes, journals, and binders filled with material showing not just how much the victim earned at work but also the other activities he or she did—from coaching Little League to cooking dinner for the family.

“The hearings give the families a sense of—I hate to use this word—but really, it’s closure," says Jeannopoulos. "Or at least it gives them an opportunity to explain more about who that person [who died] was, not just in terms of net worth and earning capacity, but who the individual was and how they contributed to their loved ones’ lives on a daily basis."

In the end, that may mean as much to the families as the check they receive from the fund.