Hadfield on the September 11 Fund and Litigation

Gillian Hadfield (USC) has posted what promises to be a fascinating qualitative analysis on the decision of victims of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 to litigate or obtain compensation through the September 11 Fund.  The Article, called “Framing the Choice Between Cash and Courthouse: Experiences with the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund” will be published in the Law and Society Review and is posted on SSRN.  This is a very important contribution to our thinking on what types of procedures ought to be used in mass tort cases.  Here is the abstract:

In this paper I report the results of a quantitative and qualitativeempirical study of how those who were injured or lost a family memberin the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks evaluated the tradeoffbetween a cash payment – available through the Victim Compensation Fund- and the pursuit of litigation. Responses make it clear that potentialplaintiffs saw much more at stake than monetary compensation and thatthe choice to forego litigation required the sacrifice of importantnon-monetary, civic, values: obtaining and publicizing informationabout what happened, prompting public findings of accountability forthose responsible, and participating in the process of ensuring thatthere would be responsive change to what was learned about how theattacks and deaths happened. The results shed light on the framingcomponent of the transformation of disputes, and in particular on howpotential litigants see the decision to sue, or not, as a decision asmuch or more about how they understand their relationship to theircommunity and their responsibilities as a citizen as how they evaluatemonetary considerations.

ADL