W000109
Tuesday, November 06, 2001 2:28 PM
I am commenting on whether the law establishing a fund for victims of the
September 11th attacks, permits awards to be made without regard to what a
family had accepted in charity. To my understanding, the purpose of the fund
was to make victims and their families "whole" after any losses they
suffered. The concept of "wholeness" is regularly used in property and
casualty insurance policies. In those policies, it is regarded as
fundamentally unfair for someone to receive more compensation than they lost
due to an accident or event. Some victims will likely receive more
charitable assistance than other victims. It would be unfair for some to end
up with more monetary compensation than the others. At the same time, I do
not want people to be put off from donating to charities or for victims to
refuse charitable assistance because they fear they may lose government
assistance. Is it possible to use money from the fund to compensate for
certain definable losses and allow charities to help out with other losses?
For example, charities could be allowed to pay for a funeral or a couple
months living expenses, while the government fund might compensate for the
lost wages of a victim. I don't know if this is a workable solution. My
other suggestion would be to reward every victim an equal sum of money
regardless of what they received from charity. We can't have the charities
and victims become accountants. We must not continue to dwell on this
tragedy. If each class of victim received the same reward there would be
less chance for the government to be accused of playing favorites.
Individual Comment