Until this more than one million claims of 220,000 individual and business claimants were processed and more than $6.2 billion was paid out from the fund.

The sums promised individual claimants in the initial settlement are unlikely to be realized in any new deal, he said.

The liquidators established a mulitnational creditors committee composed of six larger individual large claimants and one attorney representing a number of individuals.

Instead, Halliburton would have to talk with the individual lawyers representing each of the hundreds of thousands of individual claimants.

By October 2009, some $490 million had been paid out to individual claimants, and acceptance of new claims had been discontinued for some time.

"We never represented any individual claimants and, as far as we're concerned, there is no conflict of interest here."

The identities of the individual claimants are, of course, "confidential."

The law firm had countered that there was no conflict because it did not represent individual claimants, only a committee representing all claimants.

Edward Fagan, a Manhattan lawyer representing her and other individual claimants, denounced the agreement.

"Sooner or later the insurance companies are going to have to come to terms with the individual claimants."