Champlain Towers Collapse: $1.021 Billion for 98 Victims in Under a Year

At 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021, the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium at 8777 Collins Avenue in Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed without warning. Ninety-eight residents died. Eleven others were injured. Search-and-rescue crews worked for weeks in the rubble before the remaining structure was demolished ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa.

The collapse triggered immediate questions about years of deferred maintenance, structural warning signs documented in engineering reports dating to 2018, and the responsibility of contractors, engineers, and the condominium association. Families of the dead and injured filed suit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, and Judge Michael Hanzman consolidated the cases into a single class action.

Judge Hanzman appointed a court-approved leadership team to direct the consolidated litigation. Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck was named lead counsel for the subclass of plaintiffs with wrongful-death and personal-injury claims. The Florida Bar News reported in September 2021 that Martinez-Cid agreed to serve on a pro bono basis, waiving any fee entitlement from the court appointment. Podhurst Orseck also individually represented dozens of decedents' families as direct retained counsel.

The litigation named more than two dozen defendants: the condominium association, engineers who had flagged structural concerns, the general contractor for a neighboring construction project suspected of contributing to soil disturbance, a security firm, and multiple insurers. Rather than pursue a years-long trial, lead counsel pursued an aggressive parallel-track settlement strategy across all defendant groups simultaneously.

On May 30, 2022, Judge Hanzman granted preliminary approval of a settlement totaling approximately $1 billion for wrongful-death and personal-injury claimants, drawn from more than 25 contributing defendants and insurers. The largest single contributions came from a security company ($517 million), the general contractor ($157 million), and proceeds from the sale of the collapse site ($120 million). Final approval followed on June 23, 2022, one day before the first anniversary of the collapse. The total recovery across all claim classes, including a separate $96 million property-damage settlement, reached approximately $1.021 billion. Judge Hanzman called the pace of the result 'beyond extraordinary.' Victim compensation checks were expected to begin in September 2022.