MIAMI — Each day, before the unusual hearings unfolded inside Judge Michael A. Hanzman’s Miami courtroom this summer, the judge’s aides would stock the judge’s bench, the lawyers’ tables and the witness stand with boxes of tissues. At some point, they knew, almost everyone would cry, and each excruciating presentation would end with Judge Hanzman offering people hugs.
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Judge Michael A. Hanzman in his chambers at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse in Miami |
She flew to Miami from
her home in Montreal for the unusual closed-door claims
hearings, which she said were handled with friendliness and
understanding. The judge knew everyone by name.
“It made it so much easier than it would be otherwise to go
through the legal system,” she said. “Emotionally, we are
all brokenhearted people.”
There was no clear playbook to follow. In retrospect, the
success of the Surfside case required willpower, experience,
teamwork and sheer luck — beginning with Judge Hanzman, one
of two judges in the complex business litigation division of
the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, being assigned by
chance to the Surfside case.
At the start, he sought the counsel of Kenneth R. Feinberg,
the special master for the 9/11 victims fund, and knew he
did not want the case to drag on for years. Judge Hanzman
declared that the Surfside matter would not be “business as
usual,” and warned the lawyers involved that he would set a
demanding schedule and not grant continuances or other legal
motions that could lead to delays.
At one point during the case, Judge Hanzman had to relocate
his chambers and courtroom, after an inspection of Miami’s
civil courthouse found a litany of issues with the building
and prompted its temporary closure.
His first unorthodox move was to persuade the surviving
members of the Champlain Towers South condo association
board to appoint Michael I. Goldberg, a lawyer, as an
independent party known as a receiver to handle residents’
lawsuits. That allowed the judge to corral all of the
complaints and eventually have them combined into one big
lawsuit. Otherwise, there would probably have been dozens of
separate legal actions.
Judge Hanzman chose well-known law firms to represent the
plaintiffs, though the firms knew up front that there might
not be enough money recovered to pay them. Some firms turned
him down, the judge said.
The legal process was not without some friction. Even before
all of the victims’ remains had been found in the rubble,
the judge decided that the land where Champlain Towers South
had stood would be sold, to ensure the biggest possible
payout. Some families wanted a memorial built there instead
of selling the land for redevelopment, but the judge
concluded that a fund made up of insurance proceeds alone
would fall far short of adequate compensation for the
victims. The nearly two-acre property was sold to a
Dubai-based developer in August for $120 million.
Next, Judge Hanzman dealt with conflicts between victims’
families, who had lost loved ones, and survivors, who had
lost property. He persuaded Bruce W. Greer, a renowned
mediator, to try to resolve their conflicts over how much
money each group deserved to receive. In February, the condo
unit owners agreed to split $83 million from the land sale
and from Champlain Towers South’s insurers, a total that
later went up to $96 million and paid them for the appraised
value of their units.
Then Mr. Greer negotiated a second settlement: more than $1
billion to be shared among families who lost loved ones in
the condo collapse. That sum came from the developers,
engineering consultants and security companies whom the law
firms had identified as possibly at fault for the disaster,
as well as their insurers. Federal investigators have still
not determined the cause of the collapse.
Finally, Judge Hanzman and a retired judge, Jonathan T.
Colby, a friend of 30 years, became the arbiters of how much
each victim’s lost earnings — and their family’s pain and
suffering — were worth.
They did not rely on any formula. Instead, they hired an
accountant to assist with economic valuations and scheduled
several three-hour hearings a day. They considered each
victim’s age, occupation and potential lifetime earnings, as
well as intangibles about how survivors have coped since
their loved one’s death. Judge Colby called it “personalized
justice.”
At their hearing, the Spiegel family shared photos and
played video testimonials about their matriarch, Judy, who
baked homemade mini waffles for her granddaughter Scarlett
and went with her son Josh to several Paul McCartney
concerts.
The judges “had a firm understanding of who we were and why
we were there, and it made us feel comfortable to continue
to open up and share stories,” said Rachel Spiegel, Judy’s
daughter. “This was very personal.”
The Surfside case “should be used as a model for other
cases,” said Kevin M. Spiegel, Judy’s husband. “That could
minimize the pain and suffering.”
Two of their lawyers, Rachel W. Furst and Alex Arteaga-Gomez,
said they admired that the hearings focused more on the
victims than on the money — and that the settlement saved
their clients from grinding lawsuits.
“We’re always representing people who are going through the
worst experience of their life,” Ms. Furst said. “But the
emotional experience of these damages hearings is much
different than a deposition.”
Not everyone went through a hearing. Some victims’ families
chose to forgo the process and accept a $1 million payout
instead. Inevitably, some families received far bigger
awards than others, though the individual awards will not be
made public.
Under state law, not all relatives of victims were eligible
for compensation. Judge Hanzman said he was heartened by how
many people asked for the court to consider awards for
extended family members like stepsiblings and in-laws.
“We just saw repeated acts of compassion and kindness and
concern by these people that were in their darkest hour,” he
said.
Many times, Judge Hanzman’s grand plan could have fallen
apart. But he credited the lawyers for both the plaintiffs
and the third-party defendants for working together, as well
as Mr. Greer, Judge Colby and Mr. Goldberg for devoting
themselves to the case.
Mr. Greer declined to be paid for his months of difficult
work, even after Judge Hanzman tried to cover a portion of
his fee. Judge Colby, who also worked free of charge,
traveled to Miami for the claims hearings a few days after
his mother’s death.
Mr. Goldberg collapsed from apparent exhaustion in April and
spent two days in the hospital.
“When I’m 85, sitting in a nursing home, and nobody wants to
listen to me, this is certainly the case that I’m going to
tell them about,” Mr. Goldberg said in an interview. “This
is the mantel on a lot of our careers, including the
judge’s.”
Everyone involved, without fail, commended Judge Hanzman for
designing the structure of the case and setting its tone and
pace.
He allowed survivors and victims’ families to speak at every
hearing and delivered hard truths in a way that was both
unvarnished and empathetic. Through it all, he still juggled
a docket of about 250 other cases.
Judge Hanzman grew up in Winter Park, Fla., near Orlando. He
did not know any lawyers personally as a child, but he
noticed that when lawyers came to his father’s small gas
station, they drove nice cars. After graduating from law
school at the University of Florida, he made millions of
dollars a year as a highly successful commercial litigator.
He sought a career change after turning 50, and gave up his
lucrative practice after Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican,
appointed him to the bench in 2011. His first assignment was
in juvenile dependency court, a post that typically lasts a
short time. He found it so fulfilling that he stayed for
five years.
Before Surfside, his courtroom made perhaps the most
headlines when the pants pocket of an accused arsonist’s
lawyer caught fire during trial. Now, the judge is often
stopped in restaurants, the grocery store and the golf
course by people who recognize him.
He decided to conduct the claims hearings himself — as
opposed to delegating them to an outsider — because the
families deserved that attention, he said, despite knowing
that the process would exact an emotional toll.
He dabbed his eyes once again at a hearing on Monday to
decide the attorneys’ fees — this time, because the families
and lawyers who packed his courtroom gave him a standing
ovation.