Jeffrey Goodman: Work on Condo Collapse Accord Earns Him Praise

Attorney of the Year Finalist

In the early hours of June 24, 2021, while residents slept in their units, the beachfront condominium complex Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida, collapsed, killing nearly 100 residents and trapping many others in the rubble.

The incident resulted in the deaths of 98 people, with many others looking for their missing family members—and for answers.

Two days following the collapse, Jeffrey Goodman, attorney with Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky in Philadelphia and a finalist for The Legal Intelligencer’s 2023 Attorney of the Year award, was approached by two victims’ families.

The families approached Goodman and firm founder Robert Mongeluzzi, asking if they would be interested in representing them in the developing case.

This wasn’t surprising, Goodman said, given that the firm handles more construction accidents than any firm in the country.

And Goodman himself is no stranger to construction cases, having spent the past 14 years at the firm, and growing up on construction sites with a real estate developer father.

Originally starting out as a clerk at Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky during his second year in law school, Goodman stayed on at the firm, eventually becoming the youngest partner in the firm’s history and holding numerous records, including the outcome of the Surfside collapse—the largest settlement in American history arising from a construction accident and the largest single-event settlement in U.S. history with a global accord of $1.2 billion.

“It was obvious to everyone that there was going to be massive litigation surrounding this,” said Goodman. “The judge immediately took every claim that had been filed, coordinated it together and really grabbed the bull by the horns with the litigation.”

From the jump, Judge Michael A. Hanzman of Florida’s Eleventh Circuit Court made it clear that lawyers would have to be willing to work the case pro bono, with the potential that he would consider awarding fees in the event of a significant recovery at the end.

When Hanzman asked for people to volunteer to be in leadership, some of the veteran Miami attorneys asked Saltz Mongeluzzi to lead the investigation into causation, given the firm’s extensive experience in that area, said Goodman.

Hanzman wanted the case to move quickly, warning nobody should sign up for a leadership role unless they were prepared to dedicate all of their professional time. Thus, Goodman moved down to Miami for the length of the case, setting up a makeshift office.

As one of the attorneys leading the plaintiffs litigation, Goodman focused on identifying how the collapse happened and who was responsible, as well as working with the experts through the discovery process to put that case together.

“We assembled a world class team of structural engineers, geotechnical engineers, hydrologists and other types of experts,” said Goodman. “We then had to create by far the most complex protocols I’ve ever seen as to how the investigation would work.”

Goodman was responsible for coordinating many of those aspects, spending weeks on site with the experts and preparing most of the discovery.

“Right away we identified that the primary potential culprit that would have the ability to satisfy this judgment was not Champlain Towers—the building that fell—but it was this high rise next door, this ultra luxury high rise that had been developed in the years leading up to it, that we originally saw some reason to think did some things in their construction that caused the weakening of their neighbor, primarily causing excessive vibrations,” Goodwin said. “I was basically in charge of putting that case together.”

Goodman took the depositions of the key construction people, put together the media presentation on why it was the building next door’s construction that caused the collapse, and was part of the team that negotiated the settlement.

One of the challenging aspects of the case was the pressing timeline. According to Goodman, “the judge gave us the most aggressive discovery schedule I have ever seen in my career.”

“Complex construction cases that deal with projects as detailed as the construction of 87 Park, which was a 16-story luxury high-rise on the beach, which provides a whole other level of complications, you’re talking about over a million pages of documents. You’re talking about what probably would have been 80 to 100 depositions, and you’re talking about a judge who gave a timeline to do that that was a tighter timeline than would be associated with your normal slip-and-fall case,” he said.

Such a tight timeline proved challenging in regards to assembling and working with teams of experts, as well.

“Usually you deal with your site work before you start with your depositions. I was part of twice-weekly project meetings related to the onsite investigation activities. We would have to take breaks in the depositions so that I could Zoom into the project meeting about the work that was taking place onsite,” said Goodwin. “We took a lot of things that would normally happen in sequence and had them happen all at once.”

Yet, according to Goodman, a great team was assembled, with 17 firms involved in leadership to aid in reviewing what grew to over one million pages of documents.

And ultimately, the tight timeline and the challenges that ensued were for a reason.

“You had 98 people that died, you had 136 people that lost their homes as well. The people that were homeless because of this, that were dealing with temporary housing situations,” Goodman stressed. “You had a community that was looking for us to learn what happened. You had people in neighboring buildings that were worried their buildings might fall. And so the judge said we’re getting this done within a year, which most of us viewed as somewhat unrealistic. But ultimately we got it done.”

“When all you’ve done for a decade is represent families who’ve lost loved ones, you can get a little numb to the emotion,” said Goodman. “This was different.”

“When we met with these families, their loved ones weren’t dead. They were missing,” he noted. “It was weeks before they actually found them and were declared dead and there was an entirely different emotion about that.”

“I credit the judge more than anybody with the timeline of this case,” Goodman said. “There was not a lawyer in this case that thought we could accomplish all we needed to in the timeline the judge proposed. But he held the gun to our heads to do it and we did it. I also, and I don’t do this a lot, I credit the defense lawyers and their insurance adjusters for not dragging this out like defendants and insurance companies tend to do. They took the deadline seriously.”

Goodman also credited the plaintiffs team’s planning for the quick settlement.

“Part of the timing was good strategic planning on our part. We had some incredibly damaging documents. There were some witnesses that were going to be very uncomfortable at their depositions,” noted Goodman. “And we scheduled those depositions and aggressively pushed discussions of settlement prior to those depositions.”

For his work on the case, a docket order was entered to specifically commend Goodman.

As a result of Surfside, Goodman says there are much stricter regulations in place in South Florida for inspections of buildings. He highlighted how through this work there have been changes made to help prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future.

“I had the privilege of working with a lot of great lawyers on the case who helped put all this together,” said Goodman. ”I deserve a tiny piece of the credit for ultimately the result that was achieved. There was a phenomenal leadership team that I was fortunate to be a part of.”