Posts Tagged ‘quick payments’
Feinberg still stalling Hood’s lawsuit…

"Woah, woah, wooaaahhh, just hang on a minute, just hang on one simple minute, one second...slow down, let's think this through and really, take the necessary time so we only say what we precisely mean ...a moment so we, so I can be perfectly clear...okay, clear...I'm ready now and I can't possibly be more clear when I say to you, what I'm about to say right now, saying it clearly...I have never stalled anything in my life."
For someone who claims his GCCF process has been “vindicated,” Ken Feinberg is really going through the legal maneuvers to make sure Jim Hood, Attorney General of Mississippi, can’t get a look behind his curtain.
The lawsuit, originally filed in Hinds County Chancery Court, came when Mr. Hood asked Feinberg to turn over the records of BP oil spill related claims by workers and business owners who gave Hood permission to review their personal financial information.
Feinberg said no, so Jim Hood filed suit. Then Feinberg said he wanted the case removed to Federal Court because the spill happened on the Outer Continental Shelf.
Okay…
It certainly had nothing to do with the idea Ken didn’t want the case to be heard by a Mississippi Judge, presiding over Mississippi people upset about a spill affecting their Mississippi lives, beaches and businesses, nor how Hood was primarily concerned that Feinberg had violated the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act.
Why, that would be ridiculous…Feinberg’s just trying to follow the law.
And now, not content to stall this lawsuit by moving it to a potentially kinder judge in Federal Court, he now wants the case stayed:
“Feinberg, the administrator of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, says all proceedings should be delayed until it is decided if Hood’s lawsuit should be transferred to the BP oil spill multi-district litigation in New Orleans, “this court should stay this case pending the (Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation’s) decision whether to transfer it to MDL 2179 so as to prevent the needless waste of time and resources of the parties and the court and to avoid potentially inconsistent rulings.”
Needless waste of time and resources?
Well, Ken might know something about that…ask claimants still waiting for payment along the Gulf Coast. Ask people who had to wait for their interim payments while Feinberg worked first on claims more beneficial to his boss, British Petroleum, the quick claims, the final claims, that required claimants to waive their rights to sue BP.
This all continues to be about transparency. Ken Feinberg has consistently said he understands the GCCF should be more transparent, and he has consistently done little to nothing about it. So when a group of claimants gives permission to the Mississippi Attorney General to look at their claims, at their personal financial information to ensure everything is on the up and up, Feinberg again errs on the side of being opaque, and then he stalls.
And then he stalls some more. And then he requests a stay.
Really, it’s time for this to stop.
Read the article,
Feinberg wants Miss. AG’s case stayed
Have a nice day.
Your Musical Interlude…Dax Riggs, MRB’s, Oysters and Feinberg…
Your Musical Interlude…
Dax Riggs – I Hear Satan
Last year, I was hanging out at MRB’s on St. Phillip, primarily because it was one of the few bars I could find in New Orleans that had hockey on their several televisions, but also ’cause back when I lived round town, few years back I was good friends with one of the bartenders, the bar I worked at being only two blocks away…my year break from social work and all that…time off, refresh, have many drinks while serving many drinks over many days and months and drinks, and did I mention…drinks?
Anyways…once a social worker, always a social worker and it don’t matter if you’re taking a break or not, you pay attention to people and you look, at least I do, for signs exhibited by those around you indicating how their days are treating them…
And that night at MRB’s, I was watching the Detroit Red Wings get clobbered, made all the more amusing because the bartender was sporting a Red Wings t-shirt and truth be told, I was watching the people much as I was watching the game and I noticed a particular woman, hanging out, shooting pool. She was early thirties, but dressed like a school-girl, pale skin, goth black hair in pony-tails, short plaid skirt and bright red lipstick. The sexual suggestions were not suggestions at all, and she was not alone. She was attractive, if you’re into that kind of look, the Suicide Girl tattoo thing, but what I found most fascinating was who she was with. I’d say he was mid-fifties, rather large, stained shirt and drunk as fuck and it became apparent this wasn’t a one time hook-up between the two, it was something more regular, more familiar. The bar knew the guy and showed no reaction whatsoever to her volume, her arms wrapped round his neck, her hand occasionally dropped to his crotch and she addressed many by name, but while I drank my drinks and watched the game I did notice a glance my way, a smile framed by those red lips, her pitch black mascara round arched eyes and a suggestive leg draped over the pool table, showing a lotta skin and a lotta exhaled breaths, lost way too quickly. At one point she watched me watching and she leaned over the table to take a shot, cue stick in hands. Glancing behind she grinned, then flipped up the short plaid skirt to reveal her g-string…
I felt bad, especially as she went back to the greasier man to grab the cigarette he extended and a fresh drink…I didn’t know why for sure I felt bad, but I did. The whole thing just smacked of bad knowledge…soon to be made even worse when she slid over to me, cigarette extended and paused…
Obligingly, I flicked the lighter as she leaned in, and she inhaled, then exhaled, her larger eyes fixated briefly on mine as she said…”I hate my life. I want to die.”
When she said the words, her face went blank and her eyes, they just kinda emptied…and over a year later, I haven’t forgotten her. She was a kind of photograph, a reminder of the many faces desperation can undertake, and a reminder how as a social worker, sometimes there’s nothing you can do, especially when you don’t even know if its any of your business…the whole thing just kind of sucked, really…
So, the moral of the story?
Simple…obvious really…
Feinberg is fucking over a lot of people, even the oyster fishers he claims to really have an eye out for, showing that GCCF fire just burns on and on…
Read the article:
Have a nice day.
Riki Ott, marine toxicologist, weighs in on the Feinberg lie…
In a great article about the GCCF, Riki Ott attacks both Feinberg’s recent declaration that he’s received no health related claims, and also how being the scientist he is, hasn’t seen any scientific evidence of the link between BP and Nalco’s chemicals and Gulf Coast sickness:
“Recently Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer overseeing the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility to “make it right” for people harmed by the British Petroleum oil blowout disaster, told a Louisiana House and Senate committee that he had not seen any claims, or any scientific evidence, linking BP’s oil and dispersant release to chemical illnesses. Feinberg also stated that chemical illnesses take years to show up — conveniently well after his tenure with the compensation fund.
Instead of tossing the media a juicy bone, Feinberg tossed a red herring. He is wrong at worst, or intentionally misleading at best, on all points.
The GCCF process makes it difficult for people to be compensated for medical claims or even raise illness claims, while making it easy to release claims and rights to future medical care and benefits for chemical illnesses or other medically-proven illness related to the BP blowout and disaster response…”
Continue Reading:
Lots of Inconvenient Truths — Chemical Illness Epidemic in the Wake of the BP Blowout
Have a nice day.
What do Ken Feinberg and the former IMF head accused of sexual assault have in common?
Answer:
They both hired Guidepost Solutions to investigate their victims.
When Feinberg decided his “no strings” offer of quick payments for claimants was too, “no strings,” he hired Guidepost Solutions to begin investigating their already paid EAP claims and If the EAP claim was then found to be fraudulent, no quick payment…
And when Strauss-Kahn, the now former head of the IMF gets charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid, not only does Ben Stein inexplicably come out and defend him(?) by saying hotel maids are a general pain in the ass, but according to the New York Times, Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys hire Guidepost Solutions to investigate the background of the alleged victim…
So, Guidepost Solutions’ll apparently work for anybody, won’t they? Hopefully somebody reminds them some day what mother said about the friends you run with – their character has a way of rubbing off on you…
Have a nice day.
Agreed Brian, He’s BP’s Defense Attorney…

Of course sir, yes, I would be happy to assist with your claim, to serve and make sure you and your family have everything you could possibly need is my only goal with the GCCF. What? Oh that, I flunked body language class in law school...
From a great article by Dahr Jamail:
Attorney Brian Donovan, with the Donovan Law Group in Tampa, Florida, believes Feinberg is simply doing what he is being paid by BP to do.
“He’s doing his job,” Donovan says. “Feinberg is a defense attorney representing BP. To think otherwise is being foolish. As a defense attorney, he’s doing a great job for BP. But they are saying ‘go with us, or sue us’.”
Donovan has written: “In lieu of ensuring that BP oil spill victims are made whole, the primary goal of GCCF and Feinberg is the limitation of BP’s liability via the systematic postponement, reduction and denial of claims against BP. Victims of the BP oil spill must understand that ‘Administrator’ Feinberg is merely a defense attorney zealously advocating on behalf of his client BP.”
And regarding Feinberg/BP’s no-sue clause:
Contrary to what Feinberg is telling claim applicants, according to Donovan, under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990, a victim of the BP oil spill must first present a claim for damages to BP/GCCF and wait 90 days. If he or she is not paid, or accepts a lesser amount, that does not preclude the victim from pursuing future compensation. In addition, the GCCF/Feinberg requirement that a claimant sign a general release of all rights and claims is contrary to the OPA.
And regarding the inevitable:
While Donovan’s firm has been largely successful in assisting its clients in obtaining their settlements, he says: “I’m sure down the road we’re going to have to file suit. I don’t doubt that
Read the entire article here:
Denied, Deceived, Delayed by BP: Gulf Residents “On Their Knees” for Recompense
Have a good day.
Feinberg fights back? An answer to his answer to the Strange letter…
So, as I commented two days ago, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange fired off an angry letter to Ken Feinberg, the BP paid administrator of BP’s compensation fund outlining several objections he had with the process, chief among them being the snail’s pace and meager size of the payments, the lack of transparency in the process, and the stress this is causing to the citizens of his state. Mr. Strange demanded that Ken Feinberg “stop dragging his feet.”
This apparently didn’t sit too well with Mr. Feinberg who promptly wrote a letter of his own, to rebut the charges made by Strange…
Let’s review, shall we?
When it comes to the Quick Pay, Attorney General Strange asserts the reason so many are accepting the quick payments is that claimants are sick of dealing with the GCCF. Feinberg disputes this by writing that claimants take the quick payment because the ”claimant cannot prove any further damage.” Maybe, maybe not…many are curious to see if Feinberg is correct in this assumption but its awfully hard tell with so little transparency in the process. Besides, how are we to know if people cannot prove any more damage? Claimants who have accepted quick payments are no longer trying to do so which brings us back to Strange’s assertion, that people choose quick payments out of frustration. One need look only so far as some of the comments being posted by claimants to this website, or the GCCF’s own methodology comments page:
From a business/individual on February 16th, “This methodology is so unfair it now looks good to individuals and business to take the quick pay, you hold all the money and the cards.”
From a business owner on Feb 15th, “Your formula is definitely shaking-down people and businesses that are in a weakened position and are under duress.”
From an individual on Feb 14th, “The thing that really grinds my gears is that you are sitting on 16 billion! You only paid out 3.5 billion to 168,000 claimants…now 1/2 of those are gone because they were desperate and took the quick pay.”
I could continue in this vein, but you get the idea.
Feinberg also combats Strange’s accusation that the GCCF is paying people to go away, that the GCCF is working diligently to protect BP and secure releases for their liability. Feinberg writes how nothing could be further from the truth, that these release are designed to “bring closure to the prospect of endless litigation which is not beneficial either to claimants or the public interest.”
He neglects to mention litigation is also not beneficial to BP.
Nobody likes to go to court Ken, it is a long, drawn out process, but the idea that you are attempting to keep people out of court to give them closure would assume they have otherwise been “made whole.” Seeing how this is far from the case, your suggestion is condescending on two levels: the first being Gulf Coast residents can’t decide for themselves what constitutes closure and the second being people would be so stupid as to not see the waivers as ultimately saving British Petroleum a whole hell of a lot of money.
Next, Strange accused Feinberg of making meager payouts on final claims. Feinberg defends this by once again throwing out large numbers that don’t hold up to some simple math. He says the GCCF has paid $688 million dollars to 28,000 Alabamans. Okay, but this averages out to under $24,000 dollars per claim, a sum Feinberg calls “not an insignificant amount.” I would argue, like Strange, that it is quite insignificant as a large percentage of those claims are not individual claims, but business claims which receive much higher payouts and drive that average up. The future of the Gulf is unknown and the simple idea that these amounts, these averages will compensate for all present and future losses when twenty years after the Exxon Valdez, some industries have yet to rebound is again, laughable.
Feinberg points out that anyone can turn down his offer or appeal it to the Coast Guard. 467 people have tried this and 467 people have been denied, something Feinberg believes shows his process to be fair. Perhaps, or it might also show the Coast Guard is equally stingy and working with the same flawed recovery statistics as the GCCF, recovery statistics that claim the Gulf’s environment will be made whole inside of two years. This is doubtful, as a multitude of independent scientists suggest, and honestly, the Coast Guard has not been a shiny beacon of legitimacy throughout the past year…from Thad Allen’s sweeping pronouncement that they weren’t banning the reporters they were banning, to the way they stated Corexit was no longer being used when it was, to the way they accepted BP’s vastly flawed flow-rates before the well was capped, flow-rates that slowed down the spill response. In fact, I’d be curious to see any example where the Coast Guard didn’t give in to British Petroleum on pretty much anything over the past year, so why would the appeals process be any different? And this doesn’t even touch on the false hope involved in telling claimants if they don’t like the GCCF offer, they can appeal to a different body, a Coast Guard commission that has never ruled in any claimant’s favor.
Ken, isn’t that just kind of rubbing their faces in it?
Next, Strange expressed dismay about Feinberg’s continued inference of fraud being evident in claims made to the GCCF. Feinberg rebuts this by writing the GCCF has sent 1,035 claimants suspected of fraud to the Justice Department, “not an insignificant number.” Actually Ken, it is. Numerous studies have shown that after any major disaster, on average, 10% of claims in any claims process can be considered fraudulent. There have been over 480,000 claims made to the GCCF in total which would make the percentage of suspected fraudulent claims you forwarded to the DOJ ring in at far less than 1%.
Fraud is not a problem in the Gulf Coast claims process, regardless of suggestion by Feinberg, it merely serves as cover to the GCCF’s flaws.
Strange also wonders why Ken Feinberg now omits from his press releases the fact that 310,000 people were denied during the EAP process; the Attorney General further calls this omission another example of the GCCF not being “completely forthcoming.” Well okay, I’ll give that one to Feinberg. He pretty much states these numbers are common knowledge, and they are, so why would he have reason to hide them? The only thing I might consider is that when it comes to framing narratives, and Feinberg is indeed trying to promote the narrative that the GCCF is fair, he probably doesn’t want to start his recitation of final and interim claim numbers by reminding everyone just how many EAP’s the GCCF turned down. 310,000 denials with little to no transparency can cast a long shadow over a conversation on fairness.
Finally, Strange demands more transparency.
He wants Feinberg to release the amount of damages people are claiming versus the amount of damages the GCCF has offered to pay. In response Feinberg writes, “the release of such data would be a useless exercise; indeed it would be counterproductive.”
Useless and counterproductive to who? The GCCF? BP?
He goes on to cite a couple of examples where people have filed ridiculous claims, one person requesting the full $20 billion dollars while another claimant filed damages for $11 billion. Agreed Ken, those claims are ridiculous, but seeing as I can figure that out I’m pretty sure you can trust everybody else to see it as well. You write that people typically file for more damages than they can prove. and this is also true, but what Strange would appear to be looking for is a pattern of low-balling claims, and when your amounts offered are indeed meager, wanting to see this information in order to accurately evaluate your process seems entirely justified.
As I have written before, when it comes to the GCCF, full transparency is warranted. Transparency demonstrates a commitment to justice, to confidence, to credibility, but your credibility has been shown time and time again to be lacking, especially when Judge Barbier ruled you are not “independent” of BP as you so loudly trumpeted for months to anyone within ear shot of the Gulf Coast.
In fact, Barbier ruled you to be a “hybrid entity” of BP, and your claims to transparency are also a hybrid of the real thing, kind of…but not really.
The time where you could be taken at face value, where you could decide what is in the “public interest,” or how the release of information would be nothing more than a “useless exercise” are over. In fact, one could argue, as Strange does in a roundabout way, the only “useless exercise” going on in the Gulf is when you base any pro-GCCF arguments on your word.
Again, from the GCCF comments section come these words from an e-mail sent to you on Feb 14th, “I believe you should revert to the old BP calculations, they seemed fair and well thought out.” Now that is an impressive feat. Ken, once you were a self proclaimed savior to the Gulf Coast, but your Gulf Coast Claims Facility is so backwards, one claimant actually feels BP was the fair one, all along…
Methinks Strange is correct in his words.
Your’s are just one more empty harangue intended to deflect the reponsibility of failing the Gulf Coast.
Have a nice day.














