Washington -- More than a third of the injury claims to the government's Sept. 11 victim compensation fund have been turned down, mainly for lack of medical proof or because ailments had cleared up.

The fund has received 4,419 injury claims, significantly more than administrators expected when the application period ended late last year. Fund officials said 1,595 have been rejected.

Payouts to the 2,321 people granted compensation so far, almost all from injuries sustained at the World Trade Center cleanup sites, have ranged.

Officials could not yet provide an average amount, but said the smallest payout was $500 and the largest so far was $7.9 million.

Decisions on the remaining roughly 500 claims will be made by June 15.

Only a small percentage of the claims were for injuries sustained in the panicked evacuation of the towers and of downtown Manhattan. Most sought money for long-term breathing problems attributed to working on "the pile," the mountain of burning rubble left when the towers collapsed.

In making their determinations, fund administrators seek proof the applicant was at Ground Zero within 72 hours of the terror attacks, or 96 hours in the case of rescue workers. They also insist on medical documentation of the claimed injuries.

The fund's special master, Kenneth Feinberg, emphasized he found little or no attempted fraud.

"These 1,500 or so people that were denied, they were unsure of whether the program would provide them with the compensation, so they filed unsure of the rules and regulations," Feinberg said.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) said she believed Feinberg "generally has done a good job, but this may be a situation where only those with a really good lawyer have the best chance of getting accepted."

Lawyer Michael Barasch has represented hundreds of injury claims to the fund, many brought by downtown office workers, and said only 12 of his clients were rejected.

Of the hundreds of others denied compensation, Barasch termed many of them "place-holders," or people who had submitted paperwork to preserve their rights but did nothing to follow up on their claims.