Susan M. Holden - Press

Attorney heading bridge compensation panel

At a time when most people's bookshelves are stacked with potboilers and whodunits, Susan Holden is leading off her summer reading with What is Life Worth?, the memoir by the man who managed the Sept. 11 victims' fund.

Holden, a personal-injury attorney with Sieben, Grose, Von Holtum & Carey, was appointed in May to chair the three-person panel created by the state Legislature to consider claims and make agreements with survivors of the bridge collapse. Thirteen people were killed and more than 100 injured when the 35W bridge fell into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, 2007.

Holden and the panel must decide how to divide up the $24 million from the Legislature's general fund and a $12.6 million supplemental fund between the estimated 185 people who were on the bridge at the time of the collapse and their survivors.