‘Painful’ division of $1 billion Surfside settlement starts
MIAMI — With the milestone of a $1 billion settlement behind them, relatives of the 98 people who died in the Surfside condominium building collapse have begun private hearings this week with a Miami-dade judge who will calculate each victim’s monetary value — a process partly guided by actuarial equations but also fraught with painful emotions.
While relatives and their lawyers can make the case to Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman that the victims all met the same tragic fate — not unlike the passengers in a plane crash — Florida law dictates that they won’t receive equal shares of the landmark settlement. Inevitably, some will get far more than others.
And under state law, some grieving relatives like brothers and sisters might receive some damages while others could be entitled to little or nothing because of who is considered first in line to qualify for the payouts.
“Other than the immediate aftermath, when we were all waiting in agony, this phase will be the most painful, heartbreaking part of the entire ordeal,” said Pablo Rodriguez, a Miami attorney whose mother and grandmother died in the collapse.
The judge’s task of divvying up the massive class-action settlement, reached last month with an array of defendants, is daunting. One part of the calculation is based on a victim’s age, occupation and expected lifetime earnings. But he will also consider the intangible factor of ongoing pain and suffering endured by relatives of the various spouses, children, parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers who died when the oceanfront Champlain Towers South building collapsed in June of last year.
Those intangibles abound. The victims range in age from 1 to 92. They include lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, actors, college students, retirees, a musician, a flight attendant, a Pilates instructor and a rabbi. There were the Guara sisters, Lucia, 10, and Emma, 4, who died with their parents and whose future careers and earnings can only be guessed at — Lucia aspired to be an astronaut and Emma wanted to be a princess. There was Elena Chavez, 88, who was still working as a travel agent. Theresa Vasquez, 36, who died with her parents, was a Livenation executive and former DJ. Nicole Langesfeld, 26, who died with her husband, was a young attorney who had impressed Hanzman during a hearing.
Hanzman, assisted by an accountant and a retired judge who has specialized in personal injury and wrongful death cases, is scheduled to complete his review of dozens of damage claims by the end of August. They will consult tax returns, pension records, actuarial tables and income data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The results won’t be made public, unlike the settlement agreement approved by the judge. He is expected to distribute all of the settlement money — less $100 million that dozens of plaintiffs’ lawyers have requested for their hourly work on the class- action negligence case, which resulted in one of the largest settlements in Florida history.
“The key for this case is consistency and fairness,” said South Florida attorney Michael Goldberg, who was appointed by Hanzman as the receiver for Champlain Towers South’s condo association and serves as a neutral party in the class-action litigation. “None of the victims are going to know what the others are getting.”
Although the process might be familiar to a seasoned judge like Hanzman, many of the Champlain South damage claims are complicated by the fact that some families were almost entirely wiped out by the tragedy, including parents and children. Meanwhile, other victims have no “survivors” under the definition of Florida’s wrongful death law, which only recognizes a spouse, parent or child under the age of 25. As a result, an adult brother or sister might not be entitled to as much money, including lost economic support, even if they are the closest relative.
$1 MILLION MINIMUM
At minimum, Hanzman has agreed to pay $1 million per victim to each victim’s representative. In those instances, the relatives don’t have to go through a claims hearing in front of the judge. But others, including those who qualify as survivors under state law, are choosing to go through the sensitive review process — in essence, presenting a loved one’s biography — and might receive awards in the tens of millions of dollars.