ENCORE | What's life worth? Ken Feinberg on victim compensation
Attorney Kenneth Feinberg, known as the "Pay Czar" and the "Master of Disaster," has the arduous job of assigning a dollar value to a life.
But he sees himself as an average citizen and says, "What I do is not rocket science."
The U.S. attorney is responsible for compensating victims of America's most tragic events — Agent Orange, the BP oil spill, Sandy Hook, and 9/11.
I guarantee you that unless you have a heart of stone you will be impacted by what you hear.- Ken Feinberg
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, a compensation fund was created by Congress for the victims. Feinberg volunteered his services — pro bono — and says speaking to the the hundreds of victims in this tragedy was "debilitating."
"You meet people face-to-face in confidence, and you invite them — who have suffered such terrible loss — to articulate anything they want to say," Feinberg tells The Current's guest host Laura Lynch.
Feinberg says determining a monetary value on lives that were lost in the towers is not difficult.
The amount is determined by judges and juries based on lost wages that person would have earned at work and then an added amount for pain and suffering — emotional distress.
But what is a challenge is when victims compare their compensation to others.
"[When] everybody counts other people's money, that is emotional," Feinberg explains.
He tells Lynch the real issue is when a victim says, "Mr. Feinberg, you're giving me $3 million but you gave my next door neighbor $4 million … You are tarnishing the memory of my dead wife.'"
It would be easier to give equal amounts out for compensation of a tragedy or disaster, but "once you tie compensation to the voluntary willingness not to litigate, everybody has to get a different amount of money because everybody has different jobs, different commitments," Feinberg points out.
He notes his job is a real aberration. Many cases may come to him because of an inefficient system that takes too long to compensate people, but he feels uncomfortable with the notion of using private independent compensation funds.
"The idea that one person should have all of this authority to decide who's eligible and how much money they should get, and [that] they can't go to court to challenge what I do — it's not sound public policy."
Feinberg's work is the subject the film, Playing God, which premiered earlier this year at Toronto's Hot Docs festival.
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Lara O'Brien.