Compensating Victims of Mass Disasters Through the Court System: Procedural Challenges and Innovations

Abstract

How best to compensate victims of mass disasters – whether made by man or nature – is a worldwide problem. This article considers the very different approaches in three recent U.S. disasters. In the 2001 9/11 terrorist bombings, in which the wrong-doers could not reached, the government bore the brunt of the compensation. In the Katrina litigation, where the damage was from the 2005 hurricane, long-term losses had to be recovered through insurance or tort suits, neither of which turned out very satisfactorily for the victims. In the BP Oil Spill litigation, resulting from the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the court tort system has been the primary source of compensation against BP and its partners that were responsible for the disaster. The ‘claims process’ that has been central to insuring long-term compensation is examined.