Consensus Building Institute (CBI) board member,
Kenneth R. Feinberg has been named by President Obama as the independent
administrator of a $20 billion fund recently established by BP to
compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. President Obama said
of Feinberg, "I'm confident he will assure that claims are administered
as quickly, as
fairly and as transparently as possible."
Mr.
Feinberg is an attorney and one of the nation's leading experts in
mediation and alternative dispute resolution. He was appointed by former
US Attorney General John Ashcroft to serve as the Special Master of the
Federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. In this
capacity, he developed and promulgated the Regulations governing the
administration of the Fund and administered all aspects of the program,
including evaluating applications, determining appropriate compensation
and disseminating awards.
Mr. Feinberg is the
managing partner and founder of The Feinberg Group, LLP. He has had a
distinguished teaching career as Adjunct Professor
of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, University of
Pennsylvania Law School, New York University School of Law, the
University of Virginia Law School and Columbia Law School. Mr. Feinberg
was also one of three arbitrators
selected to determine the fair market value of the original Zapruder
film of the Kennedy assassination and was one of two arbitrators
selected to determine the allocation of legal fees in the Holocaust
slave labor litigation.
From 1994 to 1995, Mr. Feinberg was a
member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Human Radiation
Experiments and from 1989 to 1990 he was a member of the Presidential Commission on
Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents. He is listed in "Profiles
in Power: The 100 Most
Influential Lawyers in America" (National Law Journal, April 4, 1994;
June 12, 2000) and was named "Lawyer of the Year" by the National Law
Journal (December, 2004). He is the author of numerous articles and
essays on mediation, mass torts and other matters.
