Victims of Air Philippines Flight 541 that crashed seven years ago in Samal City will soon get their indemnification pay as Lloyds of London, the insurance firm of the aircraft leasing company sought for amicable settlement with the parties involved.
At Kapehan sa Dabaw on Monday at SM City’s Pizza Hut, North Cotabato Vice Governor Emmanuel Pinol bared that settlement will be completed by end December 2007 or within the first quarter of 2008.
He said representatives of the Lloyds of London met on Monday the families where they will be interviewed inorder to assess the victim’s status as payment will be based on age and economic status. Kung mas bata ang victim mas malaki ang payment, he said.
The case is handled by the Nolan Law Group where in 2006 after getting an approval from the Illinois Appellate Court to hear the clash suit in Chicago pursued the adjudication process to prove the negligence of the aircraft leasing company.
Air Philippines Flight 541 crashed in the morning of April 19, 1999 in barangay Camodmod in the Island Garden City of Samal of Davao del Norte killing all 131 passengers and crew.
Pinol said not a single centavo was spent by the families of the victims in pursuing the case but with the arrangement that the Nolan Law Group gets 33 percent of the total amount of the indemnification pay.
Pinol said each victim will get at least US$1.2 million.
There will be settlements agreement with the families and the Lloyds of London and no filing of formal cases in court, he said.
As this developed Pinol said it could now be said that Filipinos have equal value to other foreign nationals with regards claim indemnification pay.
During a press conference on March 10, 2006 at the Marco Polo Hotel Davao, American lawyer Donald Nolan said that they are pushing for an equal claim of Filipino victims to citizens from US or Europe and other countries who were involved in similar incident. A Filipino victim only gets US$25,000 as against a Singaporean of US$400,000.
Pinol meanwhile said that 56 families did not accept payment of settlement from Air Philippines while there were some who got the offer for settlement first at P300,000 then increased to P5 million.
The Lloyds of London he said will pay all 131 victims involved in the plane crash despite an earlier settlement with the airline industry.
Pinol said they will write a book on how they went through the process of obtaining justice. It will touch about the judicial system, the attempt to cover up the incident up to the point of hiding evidences.
He also said that the voice data recorder that was retrieved intentionally kept and there were also spoilage of evidences.
