By Ed Neiger, Troy Tatting, and Brigette McGrath

Catastrophic failures are often preventable tragedies rather than pure, unpreventable acts of God. In the eyes of the law, “negligence” results in liability for those (1) who have a duty to others, (2) who breach such duties, and (3) by such breach has caused others (4) to be injured.

The concept of negligence holds people and organizations accountable for their failures to protect others. Without liability for negligence, a company may have no incentive to fix a broken guardrail, repair a faulty stairway, or restore a cracked condominium foundation.

On June 24, 2021, a 12-story condo building on the beachfront of Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed. The condo, Champlain Towers South, contained 136 condo residences. Early reports listed 11 people dead and 150 missing. It is a heartbreaking tragedy, especially for a condo that most would assume was entirely structurally sound — it had luxury amenities, beachfront access, and was only 40 years old having been built in 1981.

As the investigation continues, evidence emerges that this was no freak accident. The Washington Post reported leaks and flooding in the condo parking garage stretching back decades. The waterproofing on the concrete slap may have failed, allowing water to seep through concrete and damage reinforcing steel, which may have rusted out. An engineer inspected the building in October 2018 discovering “major structural damage” to a slab below the pool deck – in the very section of the building that collapsed. Residents reported stairs that were full of rubble and standing water in the garage. The building was under duress for years, yet nobody upheld their duty to remedy the major structural damages and people died. These people should be alive today.

Similarly, on August 2, 2007, a massive freeway bridge over a Interstate 35W from downtown Minneapolis collapsed leaving 13 people dead and 145 seriously injured. Again, investigation revealed this was no freak accident. The Minnesota Department of Transportation had classified the bridge as structurally deficient with a fractural critical rating, meaning the failure of just one vital component could cause the entire bridge to collapse. Nearly 300 tons of construction equipment and materials on the bridge deck had stressed an aging gusset plate – its failure sending hundreds of cars into the Mississippi River hundreds of feet below. The lawsuit resulted in a compensation fund from the State of Minnesota of $37 million dollars along with $52 million from URS Corporation—the firm that had inspected the bridge before it collapsed.

With these examples, we see how terrible “accidents” are often unnecessary tragedies. In the American civil justice system, our negligence laws allow attorneys like us to seek redress for these preventable disasters. American negligence laws provide compensation for those injured through no fault of their own and help deter failures to act that often place profits over people.

The authors have represented thousands of individuals harmed in disasters like these where individuals are harmed through no fault of their own. We often hear from a potential new client who was harmed in what they might describe as a freak accident. Sometimes they might not even know what caused their injuries. Upon investigation, we often discover that injury did not arise out of chance and there may be numerous others with similar injuries. As is frequently the case, our investigations reveal that the  catastrophe was entirely preventable. Someone had a duty to protect others and failed to do so. In America, our courts allow our citizenry the great ability to obtain justice for such wrongs.

About the Authors:

Edward Neiger is bankruptcy and mass tort lawyer. He has represented thousands of individual victims of the opioid epidemic and sexual abuse victims, including individuals from Florida, New York, and across the United States. He is an equity partner of ASK LLP.

Edward is a Brooklyn native, proud member of his local Jewish community, and a first-generation college student, earning a JD from Fordham University School of Law and an undergraduate degree in finance from Touro College. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.

Troy Tatting is the Managing Partner of ASK LLP’s mass tort and complex litigation practice. He has represented thousands of injured individuals helping them recover millions of dollars over his career. He has served in leadership positions in massive multi-district litigations and class action lawsuits on behalf of injured individuals, including massive cases in federal courts in Florida, New Jersey, California, Alabama and Massachusetts. He has represented injured individual from every state in the country.

Troy earned his JD from Quinnipiac University School of Law in Connecticut where he served as a student appellate prosecutor and intern for a federal judge.

Brigette McGrath is a Partner at ASK LLP. She too has represented thousands of injured individuals. She is admitted to practice in Florida, New York, and New Jersey.

Together, Ed, Troy, and Brigette currently represent thousands of victims of Boy Scout sexual abuse and over 60,000 victims of Purdue Pharma’s opioid products. For more information about the authors and the cases they are involved in, please visit www.asklawyersforjustice.com.