MIAMI — The judge who has called all the shots in the sprawling legal battle over the collapse of a Surfside condo tower was once a successful Miami trial attorney specializing in similar cases before putting on a black robe a decade ago and taking on the biggest case of his career last summer.
His name is Michael Hanzman. Everyone says he’s brilliant, hard-working and demanding, just the type of legal personality well-suited to tackle a Champlain Towers South case marked by 98 deaths, massive property losses and uncertain causes.
In just a year’s time — extraordinarily swift in such complicated class-action lawsuits — he has corralled and mobilized dozens of lawyers towards record settlements of $1 billion for families of the victims and another $96 million for owners who lost 136 units.
But parties on both sides of this emotionally fraught case also agree that what Hanzman has accomplished is a “compromise,” an imperfect resolution to an unfathomable tragedy.
And so, while most people involved in this landmark case sing his praises, some Champlain condo owners say they are still unhappy with the outcome and with him. Even the 61-year-old Miami-Dade circuit judge, in his usual succinct manner, admits that it’s not his job to please everyone.
“It’s been a very difficult day for all of us,” Hanzman said during a pivotal court hearing in late March, when he approved the initial $83 million settlement for the Champlain condo owners who lost their units in the oceanfront building collapse.
“I know there are a lot of hard feelings and discomfort with this settlement,” he continued, as his eyes welled up with tears at one point. “But a settlement is a compromise. I’ve said from the outset we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. For people to walk away with $83 million quickly is a remarkable result.”
After the majority of the owners protested — especially following the astonishing announcement of a second settlement of $1 billion for the wrongful-death part of the case in May — the judge agreed to add $13 million to the condo owners’ pot of money. Again, it was a gesture to reach another compromise. But in Hanzman’s experience, that is the nature of the law in massive legal disputes where hundreds of people have different interests.
Judd Rosen, a Miami attorney who represented the families of Champlain residents who lost their lives but who also participated in negotiations with the condo owners, said that without Hanzman, there would be no class action and no settlements.
Rosen said the judge was able to map out the beginning, the middle and the end of the negligence case, pressuring the plaintiffs’ lawyers to follow his stern directions and move quickly in their negotiations with a variety of defendants with multimillion-dollar insurance policies. His end game was not to find fault and assign blame, or even get to the bottom of why the 12-story Collins Avenue condo high-rise fell down on June 24, 2021. It was to compensate the Champlain victims with as much money as possible as fast as possible.
“He took a huge gamble by putting so much pressure on the plaintiffs and the defense that it could have imploded at any time,” Rosen told the Miami Herald. “But it didn’t because of him. He knew exactly how to organize this case and move all the parties forward. While we were playing checkers, he was playing chess.”
Rosen also said that it was “unprecedented” the way that Hanzman allowed the victims to speak at the end of every court hearing since the first proceeding after the Champlain tower’s collapse. “Without him, the victims would have no voice,” he said.
Hanzman, who declined to be interviewed for this story, said at a University of Miami law school forum in March that the Surfside condo case has been a “draining” and “heart-wrenching” experience. “It’s a very unusual class action, to say the least,” he said.
First Surfside lawsuit
The first lawsuit of many was filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court just hours after the Surfside condo high-rise tumbled down in the middle of night while almost all the residents were asleep.
That first case was assigned to Hanzman. The son of a small gas station owner from Orlando, he became a top University of Florida law student and then spent 25 years as a Miami attorney focusing on securities and real estate litigation, including class-action lawsuits. Among his notable cases: lead attorney for victims in the $265 million Premium Sales Corp. Ponzi scheme in the mid-1990s, and co-lead lawyer for victims of the $837 million AIDS life insurance scam run through Mutual Benefits Corp. in the 2000 era.
Hanzman, who had become a multimillionaire as a lawyer with a passion for golf and sports cars, chose to pursue a different career path in 2010. He redirected himself to public service, recognizing the judicial bench as a means toward that end, according to lawyers who know him. He was appointed to the Miami-Dade Circuit Court in 2011 by Gov. Rick Scott. Since then, he has been reelected twice and served in the juvenile court, criminal court and civil court, most recently as one of two judges in the complex business litigation division.
That first Surfside condo case assigned to him would evolve into the epic class-action negligence case.
Longtime Miami attorney Stephen Zack, a former president of the Florida Bar and American Bar Association who was partners with Hanzman in the early 1990s, told Law360 that he was the “right judge at the right time” for the Surfside case because of his formidable ability honed over decades to figure out difficult cases.
One of Hanzman’s legal contemporaries, who is also a major player in the Champlain South litigation, agreed.
“As a lawyer, he was always focused on getting from point A to Point B as quickly as possible and getting results for the clients,” said Harley Tropin, who is co-chair of the team of plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Champlain South class action. “It’s not a question of speed for speed’s sake or expediency for expediency’s sake. He had the ability to see the whole court and see the case develop to its end.”
Tropin said Hanzman has brought that same skill set to the Miami-Dade bench, but noted that the judge’s time in the juvenile court opened his eyes to family traumas that he never experienced as a class-action lawyer in Ponzi schemes and other financial fraud cases.
“I think it had an impact on him. It made him more reflective,” Tropin said. “You go from litigating multimillion-dollar lawsuits that are all about economic (losses) to very complicated, very sad family issues. You have to do it with incredible empathy and incredible patience.”
‘Hardest job’
At an early court hearing last July, attorney Oren Cytrynbaum, who had left his Champlain condo just hours before the building collapsed, told the judge that he had “the hardest job in Miami-Dade County right now.” Cytrynbaum alluded not only to the horrific catastrophe and the emotional devastation, but he also spoke about the looming conflicts among the various victims, from the condo owners to the people who died, including residents, renters and visitors. Many people who owned units also died in the tragedy.
Cytrynbaum, who owned unit 905 while his family from Canada owned unit 906, urged the judge to reconcile the two sides: It’s “very hard to separate them” because “we know it’s going to be unfair.” He then asked the judge to hold a moment of silence in his courtroom to remember the dead.
After the brief tribute, Hanzman assured everyone he would keep an open mind, but then injected a sense of reality: “These allocations [of money] are going to be difficult and they will require negotiations.”
Hanzman constantly reminded the victims as well as their lawyers that the case “was not going to be business as usual,” and while the scope of the damages was clearly more than $1 billion, there could be “limited funds” to go around.
To set the stage for litigation, Hanzman appointed a seasoned receiver, attorney Michael Goldberg, to take over the Champlain South condo association, to shepherd and address all the arising problems in the case. Hanzman also appointed a leadership group of well-established plaintiffs’ lawyers who had extensive experience with class-action, personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation — but he gave them an ultimatum.
While he described them as “the best and the brightest” in their profession, the judge also told them that they would have to work around the clock without any guarantee of being paid — that in the end, there would be no large contingency fee of the usual one-third of damages.
However, Hanzman promised he would cover their expenses, which have totaled about $5 million so far, and consider paying them for the time they put into the case depending on the results — a $100 million bill that was delivered to the judge earlier this month.
Perhaps his most important decision was asking Miami lawyer Bruce Greer to be the mediator, who agreed to do the marathon-like work for free. Without Greer, Hanzman’s quest for quick compromises and settlements would probably have failed, as the mediator not only compelled the Champlain condo owners to accept a settlement they didn’t especially like, but he also brought the attorneys for more than 30 developers, engineers, contractors, security providers and other defendants to the table to reach individual agreements with the class of plaintiffs.
But while Greer worked behind the scenes in private mediation sessions, Hanzman was constantly in the public eye as he held more than 40 court hearings both live and on Zoom, allowing the Champlain South families and unit owners to speak their minds. For the most part, the interactions showed the judge to be civil and empathetic, but at other times Hanzman came across as impatient and testy, especially when people would ask repetitive questions or criticize his decisions.
In early January, as the 136 Champlain South condo owners and their attorneys were still struggling to reach a settlement over the loss of their beachfront units, it was becoming increasingly apparent to Hanzman that they were on a collision course with the families of the 98 people who died in the high-rise building’s collapse. At that point, the only certain funds to compensate anyone were the proposed sale of the nearly two-acre Champlain property for $120 million to a Middle Eastern developer and the Champlain condo association’s insurance coverage of about $50 million.
‘No perfect solution’
“Let’s understand there is no perfect solution,” Hanzman said at a Jan. 6 court hearing. “It’s a limited-funds case. The last thing the court wants to do is adjudicate a dispute between victims who lost units and those who lost lives.”
Everyone involved in mediation was being asked to fill out a claims questionnaire, including tenants with content claims. He reiterated his goal of settling condo-loss claims quickly so that those victims could be compensated, exit the class action and “get on with their lives” when the focus shifts to the wrongful-death claims.
“Most people have insurance for contents,” Hanzman said, making a reference to “pots and pans” destroyed in the rubble of debris from the collapse. His comments touched a nerve with some survivors.
“I resent what you said very much,” said Sharon Schechter, who was a renter. “I didn’t just lose utensils. I lost everything I owned for my entire life. I had insurance for a few thousand dollars to secure my lease. I never thought this would happen in a million years. That was everything I had — not just knives and forks.”
Hanzman responded by saying, “I didn’t mean to offend you.
“But let me give you a dose of reality,” the judge said. “We have to prioritize. It’s a limited pot of money. You have to understand where your claim may end up in the pecking order between 98 people who perished and 136 owners who lost homes.”
Relationships among the victims grew more strained when the judge realized that under Florida condo-liability law, the people who died in the building collapse could sue the unit owners for negligence in maintaining the safety of the structure — a reality that would force the owners to accept an $83 million settlement that was millions less than an independent appraisal of their units.
Some relatives argued that the condo owners should receive no compensation.
“My pain is unbearable. My heart is shattered in a million pieces and beyond repair. There are words for orphan or widow, but no word for a parent who has lost a child,” said Eileen Rosenberg, whose daughter Malky Weisz, 26, and son-in-law Benny Weisz, 32, were among more than two dozen visitors who died in the collapse. Hours before the building fell, they had arrived from New Jersey to visit Malky’s father, Harry, who owned a unit on the second floor.
“We can’t equate losing an apartment and furnishings to losing a life,” she said at a March 30 court hearing, choking back tears. “When you invest and lose money you move on. When you lose a child you cannot move on. ... I believe it is fairer to compensate families rather than those who have suffered economic loss.”
Martin Langesfeld, whose sister, Nicole, and her husband, Luis Sadovnic, died in unit 804 owned by Sadovnic’s family, told the judge “life should be paid first.”
“We believe it is completely unfair to give the only guaranteed money in this case to unit owners who may be liable,” Langesfeld said.
As friction flared among the victims, Hanzman said he believed he made the right call in approving the condo owners’ settlement. But more than half of them pushed for more compensation — especially after learning in mid-May about the stunning $1 billion settlement reached with the defendants and their insurance companies in the wrongful-death part of the class action.
At another court hearing on May 24, Hanzman raised the condo-loss settlement to $96 million, the actual appraisal of all 136 units before the collapse. But some owners were still displeased, including one who complained about the judge’s seeming obsession with compromise and expedience at their expense.
“Your honor, you make a very interesting statement, ‘Perfection is the enemy of the good.’ And that’s very practical and you’ve used that and said that many, many times,” Alberto Manrara, who, along with his wife, Maggie, was not in their 12th floor unit on the night of the collapse. “We’ve been listening to the sessions here religiously. But the good should not be sacrificed on the altar of expediency and efficiency.
“And your honor, this is your legacy case. Judge Hanzman will be judged or viewed by the courts and by the legal profession by how this case finishes,” he said. “And what we ask as property owners is that the fairness to the property owners is always respected.”
‘Word on the street’
Manrara then zeroed in on his point — the “word on the street,” he said, was that the condo owners would possibly receive less for their losses than the plaintiffs’ lawyers would for their work. “It just doesn’t look right and it just doesn’t seem fair.”
Hanzman took his comment as a personal affront and immediately retorted: “I don’t base my decisions on any kind of word on the street,” he said, pointing out that the plaintiffs’ lawyers would file their legal fees, to be followed by a court hearing where all sides could weigh in. “I’ve said this in written orders. I’ve said it from the bench a hundred times. But I’m not sure it’s sinking in,” he said.
Goldberg, whom the judge appointed as the receiver in the case, said he thought the condo owners’ criticism of the judge was unfounded because their $96 million settlement is roughly equal to the independent appraisal of the 40-year-old property.
Goldberg also said they were released from any personal liability in the wrongful-death part of the case. He added that they did not incur any condo assessment or insurance costs and did not have to pay any real estate sales fees. Lastly, he said, they were each given $15,000 for relocation expenses.
“His job is not to make friends — it’s to apply the law and the facts,” Goldberg said of the judge, noting that all of the Champlain condo owners are being compensated for the full value of their units. “That takes a strong judge. That’s all he did, and they didn’t like it. ... They should be happy, but they’re not because they’re not getting what the wrongful-death people are getting.”
To this day, the chorus of criticism continues as the condo owners await payments for their units, knowing that most won’t be able to buy a beachfront condo to replace their Surfside loss in an exploding real estate market. Meanwhile, the families of the deceased have filed their damage claims to be reviewed at mini-trials by Hanzman later this summer. Generally, they have been supportive of the judge’s decisions and their settlement, but guarded in their comments about him.
“Surviving owners reluctantly agreed to the settlement under the threat of being sued if they didn’t accept it,” said Susie Rodriguez, who owned unit 607 for 22 years. “The survivors were set up with the big scare of ‘Take this offer and exit the case or you’ll get nothing.’ We knew the pot of damages would be huge and so did they, but they kept saying there might not be enough to go around.”
“From the beginning the judge and lawyers said it was a $1 billion case, but they doubted we’d reach $1 billion, and that’s why they pressured the owners into mediation and into taking the low-ball settlement,” said Mayra Cruz, owner of unit 1205 for 20 years. She added that ”the judge has made it his goal to wrap this case up quickly by June 24 so he can look like a superstar.”
‘Game changer’
Miami attorney Rachel Furst, co-chair of the team of plaintiffs’ lawyers in the class action, said everyone involved in this complex and emotional case needs to keep things in perspective.
“He pushed all the attorneys to the limit to achieve a remarkable result in a record time,” Furst said of the judge, calling his decision to consolidate multiple Champlain South lawsuits into a class and appoint a leadership team of lawyers a “game changer.”
“It prevented the cases from dragging on for years,” she said. “Had it been left to business as usual, it would have taken many years to complete,” denying the victims of immediate compensation and some closure. She said Hanzman’s approach to the class action will be a “model” in Florida and across the country.
Tropin, her co-chair on the plaintiffs’ legal team, said that while Hanzman may be wearing the black robe of a judge, he’s a human being like anyone else.
“Intellectually, he’s done a great job. But dealing with 98 deaths and the trauma of the property owners has taken an emotional toll,” Tropin said. “He knows the effect all these decisions have on a very vulnerable and damaged (community), and he’s trying to deal with the victims with as much grace and empathy as he humanly can.”
