Some Injured Sept. 11 Got Care
Too Late to Be Eligible for Fund

In the chaotic minutes after he saw United Airlines flight 175 hit the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Dennis Sirjuesingh took little notice of the thing that hit his neck.

"Debris of every size was raining down and I felt the back of my neck and thought 'Wow, I'll have a bruise' " recalls the 38-year-old United Kingdom native, who was working at a market research company across the street.

Scared and shaken, Mr. Sirjuesingh took refuge at home. "There was no way I was going to take the valuable time of a doctor away from someone who was more hurt than I was," he says.

But the bruise didn't go away and six weeks later he says he lost feeling in his left hand, a condition his doctor later attributed to three herniated cervical discs that had been bumped by the debris.

By then, however, Mr. Sirjuesingh had missed a crucial deadline and wasn't even aware of it: according to rules hammered out in the months following the attacks, people injured on Sept. 11th had to have been treated by a medical professional within 72 hours to be eligible to receive money from the federal Victim Compensation Fund.

"These rules are treating people like machines. They were written while a city was in turmoil, while we were grieving and living in a complete war zone," says Mr. Sirjuesingh, who has set up a Web site to reach out to other injured people who may have missed the deadline as well.

By most counts, 3,025 people were killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., as a result of the terrorist attacks. To date, 895 claims have been made on their behalf. No one knows exactly how many people were injured that day and to what extent. So far, 897 people have made injury claims to the fund -- including about 100 of them for serious injuries. Only three or four claims have been denied under the 72-hour rule, a low number considering how many people were feared hurt that day, says a Justice Department official close to the fund.

"Maybe they know that if they missed the deadline, why bother to file? But that's proving the negative," says the official.

One man has the power to make exceptions to the rules. Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington-based lawyer appointed special master by Attorney General John Ashcroft in November 2001, personally reviews every claim, approving or denying awards, and allocating sums to be paid out of the U.S. Treasury. The deadline for filing claims is Dec. 22. When all claims are paid, the total is expected to reach more than $3 billion.

Mr. Feinberg originally set the deadline for reporting injuries at 24 hours, but New York Gov. George Pataki and the state's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, among others, argued that many people initially went to makeshift triage centers that offered none of the official documentation the fund requires. Others might have been distracted searching for loved ones. Fund officials finally ruled that anyone with an injury serious enough to seek compensation would have sought medical care within 72 hours, no matter what other distractions they faced.

Rescue workers who were injured at the site get some special consideration, but they too must have consulted a doctor within 72 hours of the attacks to be eligible for compensation from the fund. "You see some claims that say 'he started working on Sept. 11th and quit on Oct. 12th'... and the doctor says it was an injury on Sept. 11th. That's fine," Mr. Feinberg explained to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York last month. "But a doctor who says 'the injury progressed beginning Sept. 29th when he started helping in the cleanup,' The answer is no."

Mental injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder are not covered by the fund. Mr. Feinberg may only take mental anguish into account when he considers the duration of the physical injury and the pain and suffering that went with it. Those factors help determine the "non-economic loss" portion of the award. Economic losses, such as lost salaries and pensions, determine the other half.

The fund's largest injury award of $6.8 million went to a man who was burned over 85% of his body at the Pentagon. Fraudulent injury claims -- only three are suspected so far -- have remained minimal, prevented mainly by extensive paperwork and random checks by the Justice Department.

If Mr. Feinberg rejects his pending appeal, Mr. Sirjuesingh could still sue the airlines -- a right claimants must waive if they accept money from the fund. Before he uses his last resort, Mr. Sirjuesingh is seeking legal advice from Trial Lawyers Care, a group of pro bono lawyers who represent about 1,400 clients before the fund. But Attorney Steven Dorfman, a TLC lawyer at New York firm Eisenberg Margolis Friedman & Moses, says he thinks Mr. Sirjuesingh has an uphill battle ahead because of the deadline rule. "Dennis represents probably a larger class than any of us know of people who would deserve some type of recovery under the fund," says Mr. Dorfman.

Joyce Leigh, a 54-year-old former executive assistant at American Express who was trampled during the twin towers' collapse, says she's gotten the same discouraging feedback for her case. Ms. Leigh says she was pushed to the ground and knocked unconscious briefly in the crush of people running from the moving debris cloud. She limped to her Brooklyn home on a sore right ankle that had previously undergone surgery for an old bicycle injury.

Deeply traumatized -- especially after learning that her husband's cousin had been killed in the wreckage -- Ms. Leigh stayed home and says she was psychologically "numb" for weeks. The pain in her right ankle steadily increased, but she wasn't overly concerned.

"I took anti-inflammatories. I iced it and it didn't get any better," Ms. Leigh explained. "When I finally couldn't walk anymore, I went to a doctor."

According to her doctor, she'd been walking on a dislocated ankle ever since the trampling at Ground Zero. Before she went in for surgery a few weeks later, Ms. Leigh was laid off from her job. She wants to apply to the fund but says a series of TLC lawyers and private firms have all said her case has a slim chance of success because she missed the deadline.

"I'm very sensitive to the fact that it's hard to set up rules for injuries," Ms. Leigh says. "But ... if it's a legitimate injury, why not?"

Meanwhile, Mr. Sirjuesingh says he's in $25,000 debt and waiting for surgery he hopes will alleviate his pain and restore feeling to his hand. He says he was fired in May 2002 from his $90,000-per-year job as a conference sales manager at market research company Frost & Sullivan. The San Antonio-based company wouldn't comment on the circumstances of his departure.

His medical bills are covered by Worker's Compensation, but his only income is $400 per week in unemployment insurance, scarcely enough to cover his living expenses in New York. When he's not visiting doctors or lawyers working on his appeal, Mr. Sirjuesingh stays immobile at his apartment and works on his Web site, 911injured.org.

"I want to work, earn my living and pay my taxes," he says. "But I want my life back. I want to be active again."

Write to Elizabeth Weinstein at elizabeth.weinstein@wsj.com

Updated June 11, 2003