A true mensch and a great judge. The New York Times has a wonderful piece about Judge Michael Hanzman's handling of the Surfside case:
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.
The hearings in the civil case over the deadly collapse last year of a beachfront condominium tower in Surfside, Fla.,
gave survivors and victims’ families a chance to seek financial
compensation for their enormous losses. But those involved in the
proceedings also describe them as far more meaningful — something akin
to catharsis — which they credit to the extraordinary handling of a case
born out of calamity.
After five
weeks of lengthy and emotional hearings, the court issued letters in
late August, informing survivors and victims’ families of how much they
would receive in damages from a settlement of more than $1 billion
with insurance companies, the developers of an adjacent building and
other defendants. Individual awards ranged from $50,000 for some
post-traumatic stress disorder claims to more than $30 million for some
wrongful death claims, Judge Hanzman said in an interview this week.
“I don’t think I have shed as many tears in my 61 years as much as I have throughout the last five weeks,” he said.
***
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.
We need more judges like Judge Hanzman in both state and federal court. Here's hoping we can steal him over to the feds...
