Lawsuit by Miami real estate developer Avra Jain nears end
Miami real estate developer Avra Jain, photographed in the pool area of the Vagabond Hotel in April 2016.
A judge in a longstanding case involving high-profile real estate developer Avra Jain brought the saga to a whimpering close on Thursday.
The current matter is a malpractice suit Jain brought against her former lawyers, which was dismissed. The lawsuit stems from a complicated and costly case that began in 2009, when Jain’s former business partner Abraham Cohen sued her for $4.1 million, claiming she had stopped making payments on his $5 million stake in a failed luxury condo development in Doral.
Jain countersued using the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, claiming Cohen had misled her about the project’s viability in order to buy him out.
For more than a decade, the case has stretched out into a series of countersuits, switches in legal teams, efforts to enter new evidence, allegations of legal malpractice, an appearance before the Florida Supreme
Court and more than $1 million in unpaid legal bills.
In 2015, Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola ruled in Cohen’s favor and ordered Jain to pay $8.2 million in damages, which included the original $4.1 million plus another $4.1 million in accrued interest. Jain appealed the ruling.
According to court documents, the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney continued to represent Jain during her appeal with cocounsel Boies Schiller Flexner. The Florida Supreme Court denied the appeal on
June 23, 2017, and ordered Jain to pay.
When Buchanan tried to collect its outstanding legal fees of $1.5 million in November 2017, Jain sued the firm and shareholder Richard Morgan claiming legal malpractice, including “failure to timely disclose documents which were excluded from evidence at trial in support of Jain’s counterclaim.”
Wednesday’s ruling marks the likely end of the legal battle. After rejecting Jain’s latest attempt to reopen the case, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman left it up to Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, the law firm that represented Jain during a former lawsuit, whether to pursue its outstanding $1.5 million in unpaid legal bills.
If the firm chooses to proceed with the complaint, the case would go to jury trial and Jain would be allowed to amend her original complaint.
The law firm has until Monday to decide whether it will pursue.
LAWSUIT DISMISSED
On March 13, MiamiDade Circuit Judge Hanzman dismissed Jain’s lawsuit against Buchanan Ingersoll, ruling it was “a misguided and desperate attempt to shift Jain’s adjudicated contractual liability onto her former counsel” and added that “like most Hail Mary’s, this throw falls short of the end zone.”
In an affidavit filed May 13 in advance of Thursday’s hearing, Jain argued that she thought Buchanan Ingersoll were handling the appeal at no cost because of mistakes they had made during the original trial.
Jain also stated she would have never gone through with the appeal if she had known she would have to pay the attorneys.
“I would have never agreed to moving forward with the appeal had I thought it would cost me any money, much less an additional $600,000 in attorney’s fees,” she stated. “I already could not pay the attorney’s fees incurred through trial.”
A MAJOR PLAYER
Jain rose to prominence in 2015 after her $6 million renovation of The Vagabond Hotel, which was built in 1953 and designed by architect Robert Swartburg, who also designed the Delano Hotel on Miami Beach.
She purchased the 45room property at 7301 Biscayne Blvd. in 2012 for $2 million, rescuing it from demolition and converting it into a five-star boutique hotel in the heart of the historic MiMo (Miami Modern) district.
But Jain’s real estate career actually began in the late 1990s in New York
City, renovating properties such as the Cobblestone Lofts in Tribeca. She relocated to South Florida in 1999 and began investing in properties with various partners along Biscayne Boulevard, renovating and converting historic buildings such as the South Pacific Motel (now office space), the Knoxon (now a retailcommercial mixed-use project) and the Miami
River Inn, originally built in 1908, now a 38-room hotel.
Jain also teamed with city and county government to convert the historic Superior Apts building in Lemon City into a 19-unit affordable housing building. Her current projects include the 555 River House, a 2.2-acre mixed-use project on the Miami River; a renovation of the Gold Dust Motel in the MiMo district; and 225 Midtown, a new 15-story Class A office tower, financed in part by $33 million in Opportunity Zone funds, at 225 NE 24th St.