Even if the courts overrule Mr. Picard's approach, victims who did not file a claim before that deadline will not be eligible for compensation, Mr. Lax said.
John D. Lovi, a securities lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson, said he was preparing to notify his clients -- a large Korean fund that has filed a claim before the judge overseeing Lehman's bankruptcy -- of the report's findings.
Therefore, the class-action case filed by his firm, Lax & Neville, also asks the court to rule that any victims affected by the lawsuit would automatically be deemed to have filed a claim before the deadline.
The process takes a couple of minutes at best, as the only questions the consumer has to answer are those they know, like if they've filed a claim before, or if they have pets, and the like.
To protect against baseless claims or lawsuits that will result in little real benefit to the company, the law requires that shareholders, before filing a claim, must ask the board to decide whether to proceed with the case.
There are limits to how much you can claim, whether you can ask for monetary damages in addition to what you're owed for the debt, how long you have to file your claim, and the steps you need to take to try to collect the debt before filing a claim.
When a person files a claim, a company, before paying it, might investigate to see whether the customer's application was truthful, Scafidi said.
Wright, speaking Thursday at an early-morning news briefing at FEMA headquarters in Washington, also tried to knock down another rumor: That people enrolled in the national program need to file a claim no later than today, before a new state law governing lawsuits against insurance companies goes into effect Sept. 1.
