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Insurer to pay heirs of massacre victims
Almost a century after the Turkish massacre of more than a million Armenians during World War I, New York Life Insurance has agreed to pay up on policies held by 2,500 victims.
The agreement by one of the nation's largest insurers came only after a dozen descendants of victims filed a class-action lawsuit in California.
New York Life announced last week an "agreement in principle" to pay up to $ 10 million, at least $ 3 million of that going to Armenian charitable groups.
A company spokesman said Monday people "who believe they have a valid claim" are invited to send information to validate that claim to New York Life.
As it has been for more than 85 years, proof remains the problem.
"How do you find the link? Most people when they fled as children or young people and came to this country did not have birth certificates with them," said Ann Lusin, professor of law at Chicago's John Marshall Law School and a past president of the international Armenian Bar Association.
The 1990 census showed 8,432 Armenians in Illinois and 308,096 nationwide.
>From 1890 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, New York Life sold thousands of policies to Armenians in what then was the Ottoman Turkish empire. Many policyholders were among the estimated million or more Armenians killed outright or marched into the Syrian desert in 1915 to die when they sided with the Allies, while Turkey sided with Germany.
New York Life said it will be publishing names of policyholders in major U.S. newspapers, but it has not yet established the way it will list them.
"Are they going to organize them by name, or by city or provinces?" Lusin asked. She said having a home town as a clue would help because many family names appear with changed spellings here.
For years New York Life said it had no lists of the dead Armenian policyholders because it had sold those policies to a French company.
"Last fall, they found the ledgers in a closet, falling apart," Lusin said. She has been involved for years in efforts to have New York Life and companies in Europe pay up on policies of massacred Armenians.
New York Life said it will appoint a committee of three Armenian Americans to decide on claims, and will pay out $ 10 for every $ 1 of a policy's face value.
A calculator based on the U.S. Consumer Price Index says $ 1,000 in 1915 would be worth more than $ 17,000 today.
Oscar Tatosian, a leader in Chicago's Armenian-American community, said he
understands some of the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit "are not happy. They
feel it is not enough money and not enough effort is being made by New York
Life."
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