N002152
Monday, January 21, 2002 12:07 AM
Comments on the Calculation of Economic Loss and other items
Dear Mr. Feinberg,
My brother died in the attack on the Pentagon on September
11th, 2001. He was 40 years old when he died and he leaves behind a wife
and two children, ages 9 and 7 (at the time he died). Based on
conversations with my sister in law, and based on what I have read and heard
during your briefings with the family, I feel that there are a number of
things that you should do differently as special master of this fund.
First, your calculations of economic loss do not fairly represent the future
earnings potential of my brother. He moved back to DC and took a new job at
the pentagon less that a year ago. When he did this, he was promoted to
. In order to determine economic loss, you take the average of his
last three years of income. Since he just got promoted within the last
year, his calculation of economic loss will be understated if you take an
average of the last three years rather than just his salary this past year.
I urge you to at least look at just the last year of salary and make future
adjustments based on that, rather than use your current suggested method.
Second, I think you need to protect the non economic loss allocation.
Adding non economic loss to economic loss and then taking the collateral
offsets against the combined amount does not seem to be consistent with the
intent in which congress passed this law. I would suggest you only take the
offsets against economic loss, thereby protecting the non economic loss
allocation.
Third, I would urge you to raise the allocation for non economic loss. The
amount you suggest is most definitely not consistent with the intent in which
congress passed this law. We are spending millions to bail out the airlines
(who seem to forget their culpability in this whole event.....we left them in
charge of airline security, they chose the low cost provider, and we are
surprised at what happened??!!), and we will spend millions in aid to
Afghanistan; surely we can help provide for the families who have to live the
rest of their lives without their loved ones. I would suggest that you set
the non economic loss allocation at $1Million for the deceased and $100,000
for each surviving dependent. Then protect this allocation from the
collateral offsets as I suggest above.
You mentioned in one of your meetings that congress put no cap on what would
be spent on the victims from this fund. You stated at a meeting in Crystal
City in late December that you thought $6 - $7 Billion would be spent from
this fund. The suggestions that I have made will probably not exceed this
amount. By raising the non economic loss allocation and protecting it from
collateral offsets, each family would be awarded $1Million - $2Million per
family, for a total of $3Billion - $6Billion. (Most people will lose most,
if not all of the the economic loss portion because of the collateral
offsets. Based on my suggestions, they will at least get the non economic
loss allocation.) I think this is more in line with the intent in which
Congress passed this bill.
I hope you will seriously consider these suggestions. My sister in law is
not greedy, she is not looking for a hand out, she is worried about providing
for the future of her family without her husband, who was to be the only
source of income for their family.
Thank you for your consideration,
Individual Comment
Alexandria, VA