GM Compensation Program Will Start By Month End

Kenneth Feinberg, who is in charge of the General Motors Co. fund to compensate victims for ignition flaws linked to at least 13 deaths, said he will establish a program by month’s end to determine payments.

“It’s going very well,” he told Bloomberg Television today. “By the end of this month, we will establish a compensation program that will define who’s eligible to file a claim with this fund that I’m creating, what the dollars will look like for those who do file? The obligations they will have, the plaintiffs, to prove their claim.”

Feinberg, the lawyer who ran similar funds for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the 2010 BP Plc oil spill, was hired to review compensation for victims following GM’s recall of 2.59 million small cars in February. The Detroit-based automaker is facing investigations from Congress and the U.S. Justice Department into why it took more than a decade to call back the cars and last week released its own internal investigation into the matter, which saw 15 people dimissed from the company.

While Feinberg today reiterated that the fund will start taking claims around Aug. 1, he said it will only exist for a limited time.

‘This program can’t go on forever,’’ he said. “If we start by Aug. 1, we want to have a relatively modest timetable.”