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$3 Quadrillion? Oh, come on!
By Lauren | January 11, 2008
The Associated Press reports that restitution claims from Hurricane Katrina have been filed this week with the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s no surprise that some of those claims were substantial - whole towns were wiped away by the storm, and far too many people tragically lost their homes, their jobs, their lives and their loved ones in what may have been the most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history.
Still, I was dumbfounded to learn that one unknown claimant valued his or her personal losses in excess of three quadrillion dollars. That’s right - three quadrillion. That’s more than 225 times the entire U.S. Gross National Product, a sum that would make Bill Gates’ massive fortune look downright puny by comparison. To put the claim in some perspective, the AP observed that one quadrillion pennies, if stacked, would reach to Saturn. Apparently, this particular claimant intends to make the trip three hundred times.
I’m no big fan of tort reform - too often, I think, tort reform advocates exaggerate the impact of the occasional whopping jury award to justify withholding more modest restitution from deserving plaintiffs. (For my take on the infamous McDonald’s coffee case, read my upcoming book, The Art of the Apology: How to Apologize Effectively to Practically Anyone. As far as I can tell, that jury was right on!) But a claim for three quadrillion dollars goes so far beyond reason that it might as well be a claim for nothing at all. It definitely can’t be paid, it probably can’t be readily settled, and it likely won’t even be discussed in a rational way.
I hope we’ll learn in the weeks to come that the claimant was trying to make a point with that astronomical figure. Perhaps he or she has sat alone for years in a FEMA trailer waiting for promised assistance that never came, mourning the loss of home, family and friends. If so, my heart goes out to the claimant - those are abiding personal injuries that truly can never be made whole, regardless of the amount of money involved.
I fear, however, that we’ll discover instead that some overzealous attorney submitted that $3 quadrillion claim as a bullying tactic to force the government to fork over a bigger settlement. If so, shame on that lawyer! No matter how much money the government sets aside for Hurricane Katrina relief, the odds are good that no one who suffered through the storm will recover everything they lost, and Heaven only knows how much time and effort will be spent wrangling over this single claim while others languish, waiting for the attention they also deserve. Other people suffered too - it would be grossly unfair for them to receive less than this one audacious claimant just because they submitted more reasonable claims.
Whatever loss this claimant suffered, it should be addressed honestly and compassionately, not with inflated demands and media hoopla.
Topics: Legal Ethics, Personal Ethics |