Facing a mountain of possible litigation, Florida lawmakers could take the unprecedented step of creating a $160 million fund to pay the families of the 34 people killed or injured in the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history.
The bills to create compensation funds include an admission that “multiple failures at various levels of government” culminated in the mass shooting and contributed to its magnitude.
Families of the 17 killed and 17 wounded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018, could access the funds only if they agree not to sue the state or its agencies.
Creating such a large taxpayer-backed fund would be an extraordinary act, said Kenneth Feinberg, who administered funds for 9/11, the Pulse nightclub shooting and other national tragedies.
“You can find many innocent victims in Florida who say government failed,” Feinberg said. “It’s a slippery slope when you decide government will step up and compensate only certain victims.”
He could think of only two examples where funds were created using public dollars to pay victims of a national tragedy — the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the compensation provided to more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. Both involved the allocation of federal money by Congress.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland shooting, said making the state pay for its mistakes is one way to ensure similar lapses don’t happen in the future. Those failures have been well documented. The FBI and the Broward Sheriff’s Office bungled tips. Deputies held back as gunshots were fired. School officials fumbled lock-down procedures
“There are a lot of ways to hold people accountable and ensure that people don’t ever forget the reality of their failure,” Guttenberg said. “This is just one of those ways. If people want to try and make it that this is just about money, that is just their issue — not mine. My issue is I go home to an empty bedroom every day.”
But the bills also could give Parkland families preferential treatment over others who have been maimed or killed in lesser-known tragedies, Feinberg said.
A process is already in place for people hurt by governmental negligence, but it’s often lengthy, political and arbitrary. And it’s capped.
Florida’s sovereign immunity law limits the liability of the state and its agencies to $200,000 for a single victim and $300,000 for all victims in the same incident. Payments above that amount can be authorized through a claim bill, but those bills can languish for years in the Legislature.