Kenneth Feinberg

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.

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.[7] "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."[8]

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."[8]

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."

In 2005 his book, titled What is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 was published.

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.[9]

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Accumulate all the reports and applications, along with counter-claims to gauge and initiate the direct compensation process.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. There would be "no substitute for hard work and legal craftsmanship" of rigorous intellectual honesty.
7. The support of Senator Edward Kennedy would be recognized throughout the process.
8. Lawsuits were to be discouraged as contrary to the spirit of the law establishing the compensation fund.[10]

On July 5, 2007, a Virginia Tech press release said that Feinberg would work pro bono as the chief administrator to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund (HSMF). The HSMF was set up by the Virginia Tech Foundation in the aftermath of the April 16, 2007, shooting attacks on the Virginia Tech campus. Feinberg and the university planned to disseminate a set of proposals for comment about distributions to the families in mid-July. The press release claims that the victims or families will have options on the ultimate uses of the funds, and that payments would be completed sometime during the fall.[11]

On June 10, 2009, Feinberg was appointed by the U.S. Treasury Department to oversee the compensation of top executives at companies which have received federal bailout assistance.[12] As part of his policies, he has suggested to many bank executives that they emphasize long-term stock compensation rather than cash payments.[13]

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in a statement about Feinberg's rulings on executive pay, said, "We all share an interest in seeing these companies return taxpayer dollars as soon as possible, and Ken today has helped bring that day a little bit closer."[14][15]

On June 16, 2010, it was reported that Feinberg was to run a $20 billion fund to pay claims for the BP oil spill.[16] President Obama said that the $20 billion from BP "will not be controlled by either BP or by the government. It will be put in an escrow account administered by an impartial, independent third party." Obama said he and BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, agreed on having Feinberg administer the fund.[17] Feinberg was also selected by Obama to oversee the compensation of top executives at bailed out banks.

BP is agreed to pay Feinberg's six-lawyer Washington, D.C., firm, Feinberg Rozen, a flat fee of $1,250,000 a month for labor and overhead costs, but the full details of compensation are unknown.[18] Feinberg has come under harsh criticism[19][20] from public interest groups for refusing to disclose the amount of his compensation or the details of his arrangement with the company.[21]

On December 6, 2010, the Center for Justice & Democracy (CJ&D) sent a letter[22] to Robert Dudley, the CEO of BP, concerning "serious new issues raised about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest related to the administration of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility." In the letter, CJ&D pointed out actions taken by Feinberg in the administration of the compensation fund that point to serious conflicts of interest:

Mr. Feinberg, employed by BP, has decided on his own authority that all claims recipients must release all companies who caused this disaster from any and all legal responsibility, no matter how grossly negligent they were. This sweeping release, which assigns victims' claims to BP, benefits only one actor: BP – the company that happens to pay Mr. Feinberg's salary.

In January 2011, Judge Barbier, the federal judge over the oil spill litigation, after hearing evidence and arguments of the attorneys, ruled that Kenneth Feinberg was not independent of BP and could no longer claim to be so. Feinberg had been telling victims he was their lawyer and did not answer to BP.

The letter also criticized Feinberg's lack of transparency in the matter of compensation:

Despite repeated calls for the release of documents establishing the formal relationship between BP and Feinberg Rozen, as well as its subcontractors who are reviewing and adjudicating claims, almost nothing has been publicly released. And now we learn, as reported by Reuters on November 22, 2010, that BP and Feinberg Rozen consider their arrangement 'verbal,' i.e., they have not committed to writing the firm's compensation arrangement so there can be no public examination of it. Is the public to believe that there is no paper evidence at all documenting a $10 million per year financial arrangement between BP and Feinberg Rozen? What about the contracts between BP, Feinberg Rozen and the subcontractors who are advising and adjudicating claims and also being paid directly by BP? Surely these contracts must be in writing and released. This failure to release the terms of all these financial arrangements under circumstances of tremendous historic and public significance is simply unacceptable.

On September 12, 2012, Feinberg was hired by Penn State University to aid in the settlement of dozens of personal injury claims against the institution stemming from the sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky.[23] Four months later, Feinberg said that he expected settlement discussions with 28 people to yield results within a matter of weeks.[24]

Feinberg oversaw the disbursement of donations to the injured victims and families of the deceased in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting that left 12 people dead and 70 others wounded.[25]

In June 2013, Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation was given permission from the Connecticut Attorney General to distribute $7.7 million from the fund. A committee of three, headed by a retired U.S. District Court judge, was being advised by Kenneth Feinberg.[26]

On April 1, 2014, General Motors announced it had retained Feinberg to handle part of its response to a widely reported product safety recall. GM said Feinberg would serve as a consultant "to explore and evaluate options in its response to families of accident victims whose vehicles are being recalled for possible ignition switch defects."[27]

The U.S. Department of the Treasury released proposed and temporary regulations to implement the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014, as required by Congress. In Kline-Miller, Congress established a new process for multiemployer pension plans to propose a temporary or permanent reduction of pension benefits if the plan is projected to run out of money.[28] As part of Treasury's commitment to ensuring an open and fair process, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew appointed Kenneth Feinberg as a Special Master to help provide a dedicated, impartial and informed review of applications proposing to reduce pension benefits. Feinberg will oversee Treasury's implementation of Kline-Miller, including the review of applications to determine whether they meet the requirements set by Congress. He will also ensure that affected stakeholders have a single point of contact dedicated to this process.[29][30]

In February 2016, it was announced that Feinberg would be heading up the compensation fund for Volkswagen. This fund will be established to compensate the roughly 600,000 U.S. owners of diesel vehicles whose emissions are over the legal limit.[31][32]

In March 2016, the United States Department of Justice appointed Feinberg to oversee the Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.[33]

As a mediator, Kenneth Feinberg served as a mediator to help resolve price-fixing antitrust claims brought against a group of financial institutions. Working as the agreed-upon neutral, he helped secure comprehensive settlements in the billions of dollars, and thereafter helped to design and administer a compensation program to distribute settlement proceeds to eligible claimants.[34][35][36]

In 2016, the Archdiocese of New York established the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program run by Kenneth Feinberg. This Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (the "IRCP") follows in the wake of initiatives already implemented by the Archdiocese of New York (the "Archdiocese") to address the problem of sexual abuse of minors alleged against clergy of the Archdiocese. The IRCP is a new program designed to compensate eligible victims of abuse. During past years, the Archdiocese has received various individual complaints alleging sexual abuse by clergy of the Archdiocese. This Protocol outlines the eligibility criteria requirements and the process for these individuals to submit and resolve claims alleging such sexual abuse. This Protocol governs only those individual claims previously submitted to the Archdiocese and will be considered Phase I of a two-phase Program.[37]

In 2019, Feinberg worked pro bono to mediate the impasse between representatives of factions within the United Methodist Church regarding its position on homosexuality. Consequently on January 3, 2020, the parties unanimously agreed to present a plan to the 2020 General Conference to spin off one or more traditionalist denominations and allow churches and denominations to leave or remain, while dividing church assets.[38]

In 2021, Feinberg was appointed as the Special Master in the Roundup Product Multi-District Litigation by the United States District Court, Northern California District.[39] Feinberg is once again determining the value of a person's life to help Bayer settle thousands of law suits.[40]