INVITATION: We are pleased to share we will be hosting an event : In Conversation with Ken Feinberg on Friday March 8, 2024 discussing "lessons learned from compensation systems around the world." 9.30am for 10am start. Sharp.
The event is hosted at Parliament House NSW by Alex Greenwich MP, Independent Member for Sydney in the NSW Parliament
Ken will discuss the recent explosion of psychological injuries in work related claims and the need to modernise schemes that were not built to accommodate gender equity for example.
Further details will be announced in the New Year.
About Kenneth Feinberg
Kenneth Roy Feinberg is an American attorney specializing in mediation and alternative dispute resolution. Mr. Feinberg has been designated by the Federal Government to serve in a variety of public compensation and related funding programs over the past 25 years.
He served as the Chief of Staff to Senator Ted Kennedy, Special Master of the U.S. government's September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and the Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation.
Additionally, Feinberg served as the government-appointed administrator of the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Victim Compensation Fund. Feinberg was also appointed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to administer the One Fund—the victim assistance fund established in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Feinberg was also retained by General Motors to assist in their recall response and by Volkswagen to oversee their U.S. compensation of VW diesel owners affected by the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Feinberg was hired by The Boeing Company in July 2019, to oversee distribution of $50 million to support 737 MAX crash victim families
Feinberg has served as Court-Appointed Special Settlement Master in cases including Agent Orange product liability litigation, Asbestos Personal Injury Litigation and DES Cases. Feinberg was also one of three arbitrators who determined the fair market value of the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and was one of two arbitrators who determined the allocation of legal fees in the Holocaust slave labor litigation.
In addition to his acting as Mediator and Administrator of a wide variety of federally related compensation programs, Mr. Feinberg has also served as Administrator of 23 Catholic Church Dioceses’ Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Funds designed to compensate the victims of Church sexual abuse. He also served as Administrator of the One Orlando Fund following a terrorist attack at the Pulse nightclub and the One Fund Boston Compensation Program arising out of the Boston Marathon bombings.
He previously served as the Court-appointed Settlement Master in the Fiat/Chrysler Diesel Emissions class action settlement in San Francisco and is currently the Court-appointed Special Settlement Master in the national federal multi-district mass tort Roundup litigation.
Mr. Feinberg has been appointed mediator and arbitrator in thousands of complex disputes over the past 40 years.
He is a former Lecturer-in-Law at a number of U.S. law schools.
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September 11 Victim Compensation Fund
Appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be Special Master of the fund, Feinberg worked for 33 months entirely pro bono. He developed the regulations governing the administration of the fund and administered all aspects of the program, including evaluating applications, determining appropriate compensation and disseminating awards.
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History of participation
Early in the process he was described as aloof and arrogant. Feinberg was subjected to some very public criticism at meetings, in the media and on Web sites. "I underestimated the emotion of this at the beginning", Feinberg has said. "I didn't fully appreciate how soon this program had been established after 9/11, so there was a certain degree of unanticipated anger directed at me that I should have been more attuned to."
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It was up to Feinberg to make the decisions on how much each family of a 9/11 victim would receive. "It's a brutal, sort of cold, thing to do. Anybody who looks at this program and expects that by cutting a U.S. Treasury check, you are going to make 9/11 families happy, is vastly misunderstanding what's going on with this program," said Feinberg. "There is not one family member I've met who wouldn't gladly give back the check, or, in many cases, their own lives to have that loved one back. 'Happy' never enters into this equation."
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Feinberg was able to change the mind of some of his harshest critics. Charles Wolf, whose wife died in the north tower, renamed his highly critical Web site called "Fix the Fund" to "The Fund is Fixed!" At first he called Feinberg "patronizing, manipulative and at times, even cruel." He later remarked, "To have one of your sharpest critics follow through on a promise and not only join the program he was criticizing, but promote it to his peers, says a lot about you and the way you have adjusted both the program and your attitude...Today, I have complete faith in you."
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In 2005 his book, titled What is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 was published.
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Feinberg wrote that a widow of one firefighter cursed him, saying "I spit on you, and your children," for being unfair in his compensation awards.
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In his book titled What is Life Worth?, Feinberg described the eight-part plan which was applied to approaching the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund.
Identifying someone with sufficient and exceptionally broad experience in mass tort action mediation, litigation, and settlement, which Feinberg possessed through his previous personal experience as a political activist and his work in the Agent Orange compensation settlement.
To support and follow the law regarding the proportional compensation of victims based on estimated losses from future earnings, by hiring a full staff of accountants and attorneys to track and service each claim individually.
Accumulate all the reports and applications, along with counter-claims to gauge and initiate the direct compensation process.
The value of informed discretion in compensating claimants under the formula of keeping compensation under the rule of thumb that 85% of the money should not go to 15% of the 'richest' claimant families, by narrowing the gap between the largest and the smallest compensations paid to claimants.
With a mind to the future, the process of the program should be maintained and serviced as a precedent for future courts to use in future compensation cases as needed. The actions taken should be uniform in their approach.
There would be "no substitute for hard work and legal craftsmanship" of rigorous intellectual honesty.
The support of Senator Edward Kennedy would be recognized throughout the process.
Lawsuits were to be discouraged as contrary to the spirit of the law establishing the compensation fund
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