When the Walls Fall Down: Disaster Litigation and the Surfside Condo Collapse

SPONSORED BY PIVOT ENGINEERS

The collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida on June 24, 2021 unleased a tidal wave of litigation. These cases extended far beyond the threshold issue of who was responsible for the collapse among the dozens of defendants (from the general contractor to the pool maintenance company) that were sued. The parties were soon embroiled in complex issues surrounding the requests for class-action certification of classes with directly competing interests. Insurance issues pervaded the entire process. And in a bold move intended to resolve the morass, a mediator was appointed to triangulate all of the conflicting claims and defenses in an expedited ADR proceeding. Miraculously, large portions of these cases were resolved in less than a year. This program will provide an exciting and one-of-a-kind opportunity to explore how these cases unfolded and lessons learned from defense counsel, insurance counsel, and an engineering consultant who were in “the room where it happened.”