There are many angry people now, and things like this are not helping. There should be more oversight and accountability in these payouts. People are hurting, their way of life has changed, their livelihoods destroyed.
Kenneth Feinberg, who is overseeing the compensation fund payouts does not seem to have a handle on the situation.
$10 million payout went to a BP business partnerBP won't even name the business partner. Not very transparent.
BP's compensation fund for Gulf oil spill victims has made a final settlement payment to only one of about 91,000 people and businesses waiting for checks, and that $10 million payout went to a BP business partner, reports the Associated Press.
The energy giant, citing confidentiality, won't identify the business but acknowledges it lobbied for the payment. BP spokeswoman Hejdi Feick, in an e-mail to AP, called it "a unique situation in which an existing BP business partner and BP submitted a view on a specific claim" to the facility.
The fund's administrator, Kenneth Feinberg, told AP that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility never reviewed the $10 million claim for merit. He said BP struck an outside deal with the business and told the fund to make the payment, according to the story.
"At the request of the parties, the settlement reached between BP and the other party was paid out of the GCCF fund," Feinberg told the AP. "It was a private settlement and we paid it, but we were not privy to the settlement negotiations between BP and that party."
Here is a video and article from WINK News. The video shows the anger people are feeling about the lack of success in getting claims paid.
CALL FOR ACTION: BP oil spill claims deniedNAPLES, Fla--When the BP oil spill interrupted their lives, three different families turned to us for help. All of them suffered business losses, but their claims were denied. Not one family could get a reason why. Roberto Cabrera from Naples fishes for king mackerel in Louisiana.
"They took my heart. They took my heart," said Cabrera, "That's all I have to say They took my heart. We can not go back to Louisiana."
A second and third family were denied also.
Ron Ziemba runs a Naples limousine service taking tourists from the airport to their hotels. Ziemba says over the summer, "Literally our phones stopped ringing."
Commercial fishermen Tauni Roster and her husband's situation is more complex. They were in the process of changing from deep line fishing to crabbing. The couple sold half their Fort Myers Beach business: their fishing IFQs. Those are the quotas for the amount of fish their allowed to catch.
They were about to finalize the sale of their boat but after the spill the buyer backed out. He gave them a written letter saying he would not buy the boat because fishing was closed in the gulf due to the BP oil spill.
The letter they received doesn't tell them why they were rejected or what they were missing. It also tells them they can appeal but the Gulf Coast Claims Facility doesn't allow anyone to appeal unless their claim is more than 250 thousand dollars.
Turns out Senators Bill Nelson and Mary Landrieu are having trouble getting the answers.
Ken Feinberg's law firm, Feinberg Rozen LP, is paid $850,000 monthly by BP. Some believe that has an effect on Feinberg's independence from BP.
Feinberg's law firm paid $850,000 a year by BP. He handles Gulf oil claims. Transparency needed?Feinberg's Independence From BP Questioned
NEW ORLEANS (CN) - A legal expert says aspects of BP's oil spill compensation fund made through its Gulf Coast Claims Center "do not comport with the usual standards for transparency and fairness." Kenneth Feinberg's law firm receives $850,000 a month while Feinberg oversees claims for BP. Tulane law professor Edward Sherman was hired by plaintiff counsel to determine whether the Gulf Coast Claims Facility is meeting expectations.
Sherman wrote that a claims center should be established with standards of "independence, neutrality, and experience," should adhere to judicial supervision, and should be transparent about where its funding comes from.
..."Claimants should be told Feinberg was hired by and is paid through BP, Sherman wrote. He says this would help claimants determine for themselves whether Feinberg's statement that claimants are better off not litigating may be influenced by Feinberg's contract with BP.
Even worse is the fact that one of the three law firms picked to handle the claims actually does work for BP.
One of three law firms appointed by Ken Feinberg last week to advise people filing damage claims through the Gulf Coast Claims Facility has been working for BP since at least June, according to contracts obtained by the Press-Register.
A press spokeswoman for claims czar Ken Feinberg said that he was aware that the Mississippi-based Brunini, Grantham, Grower and Hewes law firm had been doing some work for BP when he chose the company to advise claimants.
The first article above from USA Today points out that Feinberg calls the compensation fund a success. He notes it has already paid out more than $3.3 billion to 251,000 claimants. Yet only about half of the 484,000 claims filed have been denied because of ineligibility or lack of documentation. And I gather there is insufficient explanation as to what else needs to be done.
It's a 20 billion dollar fund, and after all this time only 3.1 billion have been paid? And one for 10 million was paid to an unnamed company...paid by BP who did not consult Feinberg. Makes one wonder how anyone could call that a success.
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