$1.2 Billion Settlement for 98 Victims of the Champlain Towers South Collapse

In the early morning hours of June 24, 2021, the twelve-story Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed without warning, killing 98 residents. The disaster drew immediate comparisons to building failures seen in earthquake zones, not in a quiet beachfront town. Rescue crews worked for weeks. The dead ranged from young children to elderly couples. Families were left with questions that took a year of litigation to begin answering.

Within days of the collapse, a civil class-action lawsuit was filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court. The case consolidated claims from survivors, property owners, and the families of those who died. Judge Michael Hanzman, who later described it as the most complicated case of his 35-year career, presided over a process that involved roughly 40 defendant entities and more than 130 attorneys logging approximately 34,000 combined hours.

Rachel Furst, a partner at Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen in Coral Gables, served as co-chair of the plaintiffs' attorney team alongside Harley S. Tropin of Kozyak Tropin and Throckmorton. Together they led negotiations with the full roster of defendants. The defendants included Securitas, the security contractor whose guard failed to activate a building-wide alarm before calling 911 the night of the collapse, as well as developers, engineers, and construction crews connected to a neighboring project. Securitas ultimately contributed more than half of the total settlement fund.

On June 24, 2022 -- exactly one year after the collapse -- Judge Hanzman approved a final settlement of $1.2 billion. The figure encompassed roughly $1 billion distributed to victims' families and injured residents, approximately $96 million set aside for condominium unit owners from proceeds of a land sale, and approximately $100 million in attorney fees and costs. Not a single victim or family member opted out of the settlement.

Judge Hanzman called the outcome 'remarkable,' noting that without a negotiated resolution the litigation could have stretched into a decade of trials. The $1.2 billion total is the largest construction-disaster settlement in United States history.