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.
