Guy Smiley????
If my math is correct, lost income over 2.75 years since 9-11, comes to $1.4 million a year salary? Does any NBA player make that much?
AmEx pays their people pretty good.
< /sarcasm>
There are apparently too many dollars in the world.
I don't begrudge her the award, but it still disturbs me that our Iraqi injured get little or nothing for their terrible injuries. Life just isn't fair.
Pat Tillman's family probably only got $100K!
I feel very sorry for this poor woman that was a victim of the evildoers. However, I would also think that she had insurance that would be covering her medical costs. I hear of tragedy happening every day and the victims don't end up getting federal aid.
It would be pointless to suethe Estate of Osama Bin Laden in court, but I do think it might be reasonable to get some serious asset seizure activities underway to pay for it all.
If our CIA cannot track down Osama's millions, and vacuum it out from under him, what do we have a CIA for?
This is beyond ridiculous. Since taxpayer money grows on trees, let's go ahead and compensate the handful of living Titanic survivors, Andrea Doria survivors, Pearl Harbor survivors, OKC bombing victims, car accident victims, etc.
Guy Smiley, that his parents would do that to him is the real crime in this story.
As to the damages, I have a hard time discussing personal injury awards with conservative non-lawyers since there are so many misconceptions floating around about the civil jury system. And while I have many issues with the 9/11 victim's compensation fund, in this case the award is justified and the idea that this woman won some kind of lottery is ridiculous.
The government is not liable to the victims on 9/11. President Bush set up a victim's compensation fund mainly to be an insurer of last resort since it was likely that the flood of litigation against third parties and municipal entitities would bankrupt them and their insurers. Further, this system also takes the 1/3 recovery of lawyers out of the picture, a huge gripe of conservatives.
The claimants who opt to take these awards forgo their right to sue the third parties, in exchange they get their money quickly and without litigation, appeals and costly attorney's fees. This woman is exactly who the fund was meant for and I personally wish her well and hope she can use the money to one day lead a normal life.
My issue with the fund is that the families of the victims who died that day have become fairly wealthy due to life insurance and worker's compensation payouts. Most of their awards from life insurance and worker's comp hovering in the $2 million range. Certainly, a bonus payment from the government is gratuitous.
The problem faced by the Bush administration was that if there was an offset in fund payments for worker's comp and life insurance, the 3,000 families of the deceased would forgo the fund and take their chances in court, which is exactly what the President did not want to happen. So it's the ultimate catch-22.
Further complicating the issue is that if the deceased's families did take their chances in court, the worker's comp insurers would be entitled to an offset. So logic dictates that the fund should include it as well. However, the likely jury awards would have been staggering partiucularly against the companies that provided security at Logan, Newark and Reagan airports, such that any benefit to the worker's comp insurers would minimal compared to the litigation costs and awards against the third parties.
Therefore, President and the fund administrators decided to err on the side of caution and not include an offset in the payout. When one looks at the overall economics, I suspect this was a wise move.
If I remember correctly, the surgeons had to really work to even save her legs. They wanted her to be able to dance at her wedding.
Her attorney is named Guy Smiley? That's the name of a Muppet (he was a game show host on Sesame Street.)
As for this:
The Victim Compensation Fund has issued awards for 2,569 injury claims. Payments have ranged from a low of $500 to Mardenfeld's award.
I don't have a problem with this woman's compensation, but I've gotta wonder how many of these other injuries are real. There were very few people who were in the hospital after 9/11 -- I remember how the city's hospitals all geared up to treat thousands of victims, and there were very few people (maybe a few dozen, if that) who actually ended up in the hospital. How these few dozen ended up to be 2,569 injured is an interesting question.
For those who died, the fund has offered awards for 5,162 claimants, generally relatives, and the average payment has been $2.1 million.
This seems excessive as well. There were fewer than 3,000 deaths, yet there were almost twice as many claimants. Did parents get compensated, as well as widows? Were there separate payments to each child? And why would somebody who wasn't a relative get to claim compensation?
Guy Smiley????