Lawsuits
Possible Funding Sources for the $997M Champlain Towers Settlement
A tentative settlement of the remaining Champlain Towers South collapse lawsuits announced late Wednesday, May 12, will include payments totaling $997 million, most of it provided by insurance policies.
The total may have been boosted by the widened scope of the lawsuits that were amended after the initial lawsuits were filed to include the developers and construction team for a neighboring apartment building where work allegedly damaged the 40-year-old residential condominium in Surfside, Fla.
Judge Michael Hanzman of state court for Miami-Dade County had been urging all parties to come to an agreement before the first anniversary of the June 24, 2021 partial collapse of the 12-story building, which was imploded in its entirety on July 4. Prior settlements with some defendants, unit owners, survivors and families of the 98 people who died, had only totaled in the tens of millions. Those amounts were considered small compared to the complete human and economic losses.
The details of the new tentative settlement that was announced by an attorney in court in Miami on the afternoon of May 12 are not complete or officially disclosed.
Several news media have published unconfirmed reports of the amounts involved.
For example, the Insurer reports that various insurance companies are on the line for a $500-million claim settlement associated with Securitas, a firm involved in the Champlain Towers South fire alarms and security systems.
According to an account published by the Miami Herald, the outlines of the rest of the settlement include payments from the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association of about $100 million. And another $400 million contribution to the settlement, according to the Miami Herald, is supposed to come from the developer, contractor, engineer and subcontractors for Eighty Seven Park, which was constructed on an adjacent property and completed in 2019.
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Claims related to the collapse were expanded to include sheet piling vibrations during Eighty Seven Park's construction in 2016 that allegedly contributed to the Champlain Towers South troubles. How those alleged vibrations combined with reports of the Champlain Towers South deteriorated concrete elements is unclear.
The prime contractor for Eighty Seven Park, John Moriarty & Associates of Florida, denied the vibration damage claims in a February response to the lawsuits. The contractor and its attorney could not be reached immediately for comment. Nor could the attorney for the building's developer.
Judge Hanzman had set a trial date for the claims in March 2023.
A final comprehensive investigative report on the partial collapse of the tower has not yet been issued by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce's National Institute of Standards & Technology.
