$1 billion settlement for victims of Surfside condo collapse ranks among highest in Florida [Miami Herald]

Miami Herald (FL)

A nearly $1 billion settlement with an array of developers, contractors and engineers sued by victims of the Surfside condo building that collapsed last summer ranks as one for the record books in Florida.

It's the second-largest class action settlement in state history -- though one famous case outstripped them all before an appellate ruling that dramatically reduced the award.

READ MORE: Lawyers in suit over Surfside collapse reveal staggering legal settlement: $997 million

No. 1: In 1997, Big Tobacco's major companies, Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., reached a staggering settlement with some 40 states for their cost of treating sick smokers. Florida's share: $11.3 billion.

No. 2: The $997 million for the Champlain Towers South's 136-unit owners, along with residents of the oceanfront property that collapsed last June, killing 98 people.

No. 3: In 2000, two Miami attorneys, Susan and Stanley Rosenblatt, beat Big Tobacco in a David-and-Goliath class-action case that resulted in a stunning $145 billion in damages on behalf of thousands of Floridians sickened from smoking. It was the highest punitive judgment awarded in a personal-injury case in U.S. history. The state's Supreme Court later overturned the award, but the Rosenblatts made a deal with the tobacco companies to guarantee $600 million in damages before their trial judgment was overturned.

No. 4: In 2010, a federal judge sentenced Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scott Rothstein to prison for 50 years after he pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges stemming from his sale of $1.2 billion in fabricated legal settlements to investors. The judge also ordered the convicted con man to repay $363 million to some 320 victims of his investment racket.

No one predicted they would be made whole. But in 2014, the Feds recovered $50 million from Rothstein's assets and lawyers for his victims collected more than $300 million in settlements from his banks, Gibraltar and TD Bank.

No. 5: In 2000, the families of 110 people killed in the 1996 ValuJet crash in the Everglades received $262 million in insurance settlements. The payments followed the federal government's criminal case against SabreTech, the jet-repair company convicted of mishandling hazardous cargo it delivered to the plane. The illegal shipment of explosive-tipped oxygen generators caused the fire that brought down the DC-9 soon after takeoff from Miami on May 11, 1996.

By any measure, the Champlain Towers victims won a massive legal victory.

"The settlement is the result of a great team effort by multiple lawyers all trying to do their best to benefit the people who lost their lives and their homes, knowing that no matter how much we recovered it would never be enough," attorney Michael Goldberg, the receiver for the Champlain Towers condominium association, told the Miami Herald.

Dozens of lawyers representing condo owners, survivors and relatives of those who lost their lives collaborated as a team in making their negligence claims in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. They also all worked with a mediator, lawyer Bruce Greer, who was appointed by Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman.