THOUSANDS FILE WITH 9/11 VICTIM COMPENSATION FUND BY DEADLINE.

By the time the clock struck midnight Dec. 22 - the deadline for filing a claim with the federal Victim Compensation Fund for injuries or deaths resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - 97 per cent, or 2,887 of the 2,976 families eligible to file death claims, had done so.

Just three weeks earlier, less than 60 per cent of these families had filed.

At the beginning of December, about 2,000 of those injured in the attacks had filed their claims.

By the deadline, the Fund had received 4,185 injury claims.

As of Dec. 31, the Fund had received a total of 7,128 death and injury claims postmarked before Dec. 23, the deadline set by Congress when it established the Fund immediately after the attacks as an alternative to filing lawsuits against the airlines, government agencies or other entities with potential liability for the attacks.

The average amount the Fund has paid on death claims is $1.8 million.

Congress specified compensation for each death was to include a tax-free sum of $250,000 plus an additional award to be determined by the Fund's special master based on a family's economic loss after deducting any benefits such as life insurance or workers' compensation.

Kenneth R. Feinberg, appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be special master of the Fund in November 2001, said he viewed the huge increase in filings as the result of word getting out to potential beneficiaries that his awards had been fair and generous.

He said he was particularly heartened that 40 persons who had filed lawsuits against the airlines decided at the last minute to file claims with the Fund instead.

When the Fund was first established, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America set up a non-profit corporation, Trial Lawyers Care, to provide free legal services to the victims of the attacks.

Former ATLA President Larry S. Stewart of Miami, FL, was named to head the volunteer effort.

At the ATLA's summer convention in 2002, he said he was overwhelmed by the response he had received from trial lawyers around the country to help with the effort.

At the time, Feinberg was under attack from a handful of claimants who thought the only way to get a fair judgment was to file a lawsuit.

Stewart predicted those claimants would be persuaded that was not the case when the Fund started to make awards based on the submissions prepared by Trial Lawyers Care.