But in other situations, the beginning and the end of an event can be quite unclear, and in turn, it can be particularly uncertain who is the victim of the disaster. On the other hand, a long-past victim of the out-of-town serial killer may not be seen as included in the disaster. Indeed, if the serial killer acts in a number of cities, the consequences of these actions cannot be aggregated as a single societal disaster, and none of the individual societies can be understood as being subject to a societal disaster.
On the one hand, the manufacture of the aircraft, its piloting and the organization of the trip and its route are the result of human activity. On the other hand, a community's heroic response to a disaster can have a positive long-term emotional impact on the victims of the disaster that would not occur where the damage was an isolated injury.). In addition, due to the widespread nature of some disasters, recovery efforts can be much more burdensome.
The financial consequences of many losses resulting from catastrophic events can be mitigated by purchasing in advance private insurance that covers the peril in question. Again, even a major earthquake is likely to kill only a small proportion of any life insurance company's customers, and the premium amount has been determined (and precisely determined) in advance. And if the law in these settings requires proof of fault as a condition for recovery, then accident victims have no legal right to compensation from their perpetrators.
Depending on the scale of the disaster, local governments may not be able to carry this effort themselves, and other governments must be called in to help.
Roles of Government in Compensating Societal Disaster Victims
Finally, I want to emphasize under this heading that, in the aftermath of a disaster, the government is not the only actor that can intervene to help the victims. The government may also simply try to promote a general cultural norm that it is a moral obligation to help neighbors, community members, or even fellow citizens in times of disaster (for example, honoring those who have done so, promoting this value in school, and so on). There is inevitably a tension between the role of private actors and that of government in providing disaster relief.
However, in fact, the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)28 is quite inadmissible to many of the claims that are likely to be made regarding the failures of federal officials to prevent disasters. On the one hand, the fear of possible liability for damages in the future, should a catastrophic accident occur, can prevent what is otherwise thought to be a socially desirable project from moving forward at all. Some opponents of nuclear power argued that this was a good reason never to allow this type of development in the first place, i.e., an unwillingness of the industry to take responsibility for the social costs it might impose.
Yet politicians concluded that the benefits of nuclear power outweighed the disaster risk, and that society would be harmed if nuclear power stopped because of the overhang of tort liability. To break the logjam, the federal government relieved the vaccine makers of the liability they feared; instead, simply put, Congress agreed that the government itself could be sued as if it were the vaccine provider. In the end, the federal government paid substantial victim compensation (through tort law).
A key element of the damages package that will be offered is that in no event will the amount of non-economic loss damages exceed $250,000 (which is far less than some juries have awarded for pain and suffering and possibly punitive damages in certain cases). individual cases). Later, a scientific consensus developed (though not yet accepted by everyone) that the pertussis vaccine was not actually the cause of the harm attributed to it by the children's families - this was the position of the vaccine makers all along. So, while it is true that the terrorist acts of 9/11 were vastly more damaging than those other instances of terrorism, there is another feature of that event that I believe played a key role in the passage of the reparations plan.
As with the Childhood Vaccine Act, tort rights were not eliminated by the 9/11 plan, although some procedural limitations were imposed beyond the liability limit. With respect to those killed in the 9/11 disaster, the plan was highly successful in enticing nearly all of those eligible (well over 95%) to seek recovery from the plan rather than sue. Most of the perhaps 90 or so lawsuits on behalf of deceased victims that remained in play at the time the compensation plan ended remain unresolved five years after the disaster, reflecting the generally slow pace of compensation cases filed in the wake of disasters (although press reports suggest that perhaps 30 of these cases have been settled, the terms of which settlements remain secret).
And the strength of that feeling of solidarity can partly explain the size of the compensation offered. But it is especially worth emphasizing here that the September 11 compensation plan was far more generous to the families of those killed on September 11 than, for example, FEMA was to the victims of the Northridge, California, earthquake, especially because FEMA provides nothing just because of a death due to a disaster. In the bigger picture, it is also important to realize that some communities that suffer from a catastrophic event (before the event) will simply be poorer, and therefore structurally less able to help those members who are struggling in the aftermath of the event. disaster with enormous problems. the accident.
However, we like to show that we are generous at least some of the time.
The Nature of the Compensation Provided
Put another way, in the turbulent times that often follow a social catastrophe, the public today regularly relies on government to step in to restore order and get normal social and economic life up and running once more. This reality suggests that national disaster relief may turn out, at least in some cases, to be a redistributive measure that is disproportionately focused on the "poor." In one sense, we can be happy with this outcome, since helping those most in need can be morally praiseworthy. What may be troubling, however, is that both our willingness to act on this instinct and the level of help we seem prepared to provide seem to be greater in the face of living disasters than in relation to, say, disasters. the consequences of everyday poverty.
Perhaps this is explicable on the grounds that many Americans think that, unlike so many victims of major disasters, all too many victims of routine poverty are themselves in some ways to blame for their condition or that routine poverty assistance schemes (rather than dramatic gestures) is the right way to attack this social problem (which may also explain why many people who think of themselves as generous, and sometimes even impulsive, donors to organized charity do not give to street beggars). They go to the questions of what kind of help should be provided and how much. Individual disaster victims can be given cash, or vouchers that are good for certain purchases, or in-kind aid (such as shelter, food, and the like).
The focus of disaster relief can be on temporary needs or long-term needs. For example, immediately after a hurricane, people may need basic temporary shelter; then they may need transitional housing while they are finding a new place to settle or their previous homes are cleaned, repaired and/or rebuilt;. Assistance may be partial or full (at least to the extent that money and other types of assistance can do so).
Therefore, a key issue in disaster relief is the proportion of the victim's loss to be compensated. The California Earthquake Authority, for example, imposes a relatively high deductible on the policies it sells and caps the maximum coverage it will offer. Damage to physical property may be treated differently than personal injury or death on the one hand or loss of intangible property on the other.
Even with respect to personal injury and death, non-economic loss may be treated differently from lost income, medical and other expenses and the like. Some of the schemes described earlier do not provide anything for personal injury or death; some provide for income replacement, medical care and other expenses, but not for pain and suffering; still others also offer compensation for pain and suffering, although in at least some of them the amount is limited. Not infrequently, victims find that there is more than one place they can turn to for financial help in the face of a catastrophe.
