After having just assembled bunk beds for my daughters, the picture of the collapsed building with the bunk beds at the top floor hits closest home 
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most likely a combination of all the above
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+aliens
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I saw a post on Reddit, which was lifted from someone on FB, saying that John McAfee had some dirt on politicians that was stored on a hard drive in the building. AND there were officials from… El Salvador maybe? One of the countries who’s going to open up to Bitcoin becoming accepted in some fashion. And that this was a US govt operation, apparently they got two birds with one stone.
It sounds like a combination. The poor design that allowed water to pool seems to have weakened the concrete that allowed salt air to corrode the underlying rebar which lead to structural failure. The new construction may have accelerated the failure, but I doubt it cause the failure.
The engineering post-mortem on this will be interesting. I wonder how many similar structures are now sweating out their own inspections.
I suspect this will make the show Engineering Disasters if that show is still running in a year or so.
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Completely agree.
Wow, sounds like there was a bit of fighting going on surrounding how to get things fixed. And between 2018 and now (possibly with additional findings and continued deterioration) the price tag might have gone from $9M to $15M. But it also sounds like they were just about ready to get going on the repairs.
The president of the board of the Florida condominium that collapsed last week resigned in 2019, partly in frustration over what she saw as the sluggish response to an engineer’s report that identified major structural damage the previous year.
Anette Goldstein was among five members of the seven-member board to resign in two weeks that fall, according to minutes from an Oct. 3 meeting, at a time when the condo association in Surfside was consumed by contentious debate about the multimillion-dollar repairs.
“We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning,” Goldstein wrote in a September 2019 resignation letter. “This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.”
It’s the kind of thing that I hate to be right about, but I kinda figured that the issue almost had to be money. That’s a big price tag to split only 130 ways.
CNN’s coverage noted: “James River Insurance Company, the commercial general liability insurer for the association, ‘has made the decision to voluntarily tender its entire limit from the enclosed policy towards attempting to resolve all the claims in this matter.’”
IANAL, but here’s my take:
This is not a surprising development, but assuming there is excess/umbrella cover I doubt the insured and the rest of the tower lets the Primary GL carrier off the hook. Generally the primary carrier has a duty to defend the insured, and the defense bills will pile up quickly on this one given the number of experts involved and number of claimants. The Primary carrier will try to settle claims to exhaust their limit to kick this problem along to the excess carrier(s), but it may not be easy to make that happen. James River could be on the hook for millions in defense costs before their $1million limit is exhausted. Note I’m assuming defense costs are outside the limit here, as they typically would be in a GL policy.
They have a duty to defend if the insured wants to be defended. A potentially liable entity is allowed to admit fault. In this case, it wouldn’t surprise me if they prefer the cash-in-hand. And they’d also prefer access to any excess insurance, if it exists.
I mean, as a corporate entity, the condo association is basically dead, anyway. Who benefits from defending them? (other than potentially the excess carrier, who may or may not have standing.)
I won’t be surprised is the excess carrier also announces it plans to pay policy limits.
The condo association isn’t going to get cash in hand from the primary GL carrier. The primary carrier has made their limits available for claimants in one of the class action suits (maybe more than one suit?). I’m assuming it’s likely that the tower of insurance may not have sufficient limits to cover all of the claimants here. In that case, it is tricky to try to use your limits to settle with a handful of claimants to exhaust the policy limit as other claimants also want some of that pie. I believe in some cases it can expose the carrier to bad faith claims.
In some cases condo board members can be sued individually in addition to suing the association. I think it’s normally a high hurdle to prove the board members of the association individually breached their duties, but given the circumstances I wouldn’t be surprised if that was in play as well.
I haven’t seen anything reported yet on the D&O cover for the association (if any), nor on the size of the GL insurance tower.
By “cash in hand” I meant “cash to pay claims”. And the insurance company is likely to work with the courts to set up a fund to reimburse claimants, even if they plan to tender their entire limits. “Claim bigger than limits, that we know we are on the hook for, with lots of claimants” isn’t all that weird in the GL world.
I’m sure someone will try, but… that’s pretty chilling. It’s already hard to get people to serve on an HOA. Knowing that I could be personally sued when I’m doing everything I can to get the needed repairs made… ugh.
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I agree more damages than limits available isn’t all that unusual. When massive defense costs are rolling in, letting a Primary GL carrier off the hook early is in that situation IMO.
Obv, we can’t see the policy or know the details of defense inside/outside of limits.
FL also had a law (at least in personal auto) that required the carrier to step up quickly and provide the limits if damages were obvious. Had a client with a massive ECO claim bc a claims handler did not tender a $50K policy limit for a multi-fatality car crash where their insured ran a stop sign (or something else that was obvious). So maybe that is a consideration here as well.
Yes, i was going to say, the insurer is more likely to get in trouble for “bad faith” if it fights the claims than if it agrees to pay policy limits. I honestly see no downside and no risk to the insurer to do so. People need the money, and paying out quickly (while trying to make sure everyone injured gets a slice) is the responsible thing to do.
This is the challenging part for the primary insurer in these cases. They’d love to pay their $1M now and be done with it, but with hundreds of claimants making sure everyone injured gets a “fair portion” is problematic. There is a lot of case law out there on this issue where insurers have been successfully sued for bad faith despite offering up policy limits, including in FL.
From the FL supreme court: “[W]hen there are multiple parties to a suit, we do not believe a ‘deems expedient’ clause will protect an insurer who, in bad faith, indiscriminately settles with one or more of the parties for the full policy limits, thus exposing the insured to an excess judgment from the remaining parties." https://www.butler.legal/juggling-multiple-claims-with-inadequate-limits"
The same source has another auto example where the insured had 10/20 limits and many people were injured. All parties asked for the 20K, putting the insurer in a tricky spot where they did get nailed for bad faith.
Some more legal discussion. https://www.schnader.com/files/Publication/73c505da-3105-42d8-91e5-831f9cccb66b/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/e1445cfa-4ed1-46c3-adc4-be56831ac09c/Whats%20an%20Insurer%20to%20Do_%20Multiple%20Claims%20and%20Insufficient%20Limits.pdf
I’ve read most of that, and it seems to be dealing with cases where an insurer is accused of selecting one claimant (or set of claimants) and overpaying them to get out from under having to negotiate with the other claimants.
That’s not what I was suggesting. I said
That’s very different from defense costs, which are typically to avoid paying at all. There are certainly cases where an insurer has a duty to defend and would be acting in bad faith to pay a claim* .
But this is a case where I would guess the condo association is willing to concede it is at fault, and it is in the interest of the association to pay claims rather than fight them. I expect there will be significant administrative expenses to set up a vehicle to divvy up the available cash. But that’s legal fees, and “ALAE”, but not “defense costs” per se.
`* I was once the actuary monitoring a multi-million dollar defense that I believe we ultimately won – policy limits were FAR less that the defense costs, but our insured was in the right, and to admit otherwise would have been very harmful to it.
My question now is how many shoddily constructed condo towers needing extensive repair are up and down the coast of Florida? Is Desantis going to add regulation to check this or act concerned now and do nothing.