Regulations were promulgated on December 20 to implement the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which was established by act of Congress in September. This legislation provides for economic and non-economic damages, subject to certain offsets, for victims of the terrorist attacks who died or who were injured in the immediate vicinity of the crash sites in New York, Pennsyl-vania, and Washington, D.C.
In return for this no-fault remedy, Congress has placed severe constraints on the liability of the possible targets of fault-based litigation, limiting the liability of most potential defendants to their available insurance, while at the same time subrogating the federal government to the rights of Fund recipients. Furthermore, since Fund disbursements might exceed all available insurance, the federal government may recover most or even all insurance proceeds, thereby making a fault-based suit a highly speculative alternative. (The Fund requires victims to choose between the Fund and a lawsuit, with a statutory exception-not reflected in the regulations-for actions against terrorists and their co-conspirators.)
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