Yahoo Autos Lawyers in suit over Surfside collapse reveal staggering legal settlement: $997 million
In a surprisingly swift resolution of the Champlain Towers South class-action lawsuit, relatives of the victims and survivors of the Surfside condo collapse have reached a settlement that will pay them nearly $1 billion, a state court judge was told Wednesday.
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The comprehensive settlement announced in Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman’s courtroom effectively closes the litigation phase of the case. Still to be decided: the individual shares the plaintiffs, including family members of the 98 people who died in the collapse, will receive.
“We have gotten $997 million in proposed settlements before you — and it could be a billion before the end of the week,” said Harley S. Tropin, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. “We will be done. The money will be distributed. These victims will get some measure of relief.”
Hanzman hoped to have the case resolved before the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the 136-unit oceanfront building in Surfside that fell at 1:22 a.m. on June 24. Although the judge said he expected far less, lawyers had hoped to recover $1 billion. But both goals were considered “a longshot,” Hanzman said.
“The result achieved and the speed is beyond extraordinary,” Hanzman said. “When this case first came in this court I told everyone this wouldn’t be business as usual. This was a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. If we didn’t have the right people handling this case, it would be a 10-year slog with tens of millions in attorneys’ fees.”
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Plaintiffs settled with at least 10 entities, including the insurers of the security company for Champlain South, the developers of the condominium next door, engineers, architects, a law firm and the Champlain South condo association.
They include 8701 Collins Development, Terra Group, Terra World Investments, John Moriarty and Associates of Florida, NV5, DeSimone Consulting Engineers, Stantec Architecture, Morabito Consultants and the law firm Becker.
The Herald has learned an approximate breakdown of the $997 million total. Various parties associated with the Eighty Seven Park condo adjacent to Champlain South settled for about $400 million. Parties associated with the Champlain South condo association account for about $100 million. The town of Surfside is settling for a sum in the low, single-digit millions. Securitas, the security company responsible for safety systems at Champlain South that included smoke alarms and intercoms, settled for the largest amount, in the neighborhood of $450 million to $500 million.
The last major defendants to settle were 8701 Collins Development and Terra Group, the developers, and John Moriarty and Associates, the general contractor of the neighboring ultra-luxury, Renzo Piano-designed Eighty Seven Park condo, located just south of the Surfside municipal border with Miami Beach. They were accused in the litigation of destabilizing Champlain South during Eighty Seven Park’s construction in 2016 when metal sheet piles were driven into the ground about 12 feet from the Surfside condo’s perimeter wall around the pool deck.
READ MORE: Surfside tower was flawed from day one
They will pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs without admitting any negligence. Champlain South residents claimed vibrations from sheet-pile driving rattled their building — knocking pictures off their walls and nearly throwing one resident off a treadmill. Five years later, the pool deck at Champlain South broke away from the structural wall near where the pile-driving occurred. Seven minutes after the deck caved in, half of the 12-story tower collapsed.
