If Swissair work on the same basis as EU airlines (I accept they are no an EU airline) then their insurers will have agreed to payment under resolution EU2027/97 which says they cannot file a defence up to 100,000SDR's per pax for death (approx £90k) and in the event of being liable they will have unlimited liability.
On this basis, Swissair's insurers will be on the hook for the payments to the pax not Swissair, therefore it's totally unrelated to the payments.
Just as an aside, BMI, BA, LH, AF etc have all had major hull losses and are all still with us, I admit a couple of them have government backing, but not sure one can use the hull loss as an excuse.