Buckley Tower case goes to trial
Unit owners of Buckley Towers, a 40-year-old condominium complex in North Miami Beach, go to trial in Miami federal court Monday in a high-stakes battle over more than $18 million they claim the condo’s insurance company owes for damages caused by Hurricane Wilma.
The twin buildings, home to more than 500 mostly elderly unit owners, face possible condemnation by Miami-Dade County because of water damage, mildew, utility problems and roof or structural damage that owners claim is related to Wilma’s impact in 2005.
The lawsuit, filed by Daniel Rosenbaum, of Katzman Garfinkel Rosenbaum’s office in West Palm Beach, is the latest in a string of federal suits against global condo insurer QBE Insurance.
The court challenge highlights the plight of some older buildings in Miami-Dade County as they near their 40-year anniversary under the county’s recertification program. The program requires that commercial and condominium buildings undergo a rigorous re-inspection for safety when they hit the four-decade mark.
Recertification for Buckley Towers is crucial, but might not happen soon enough. The county already started a countdown toward condemning the buildings as uninhabitable last fall. That countdown was reset recently due to a technicality when Rosenbaum claimed the buildings had only been occupied for 39 years. But a new deadline for condemnation is approaching in the next few weeks.
According to the complaint, QBE owes more than $18 million for repairs. But, the insurer said in its answer to the complaint that Buckley Towers failed to comply with efforts to investigate damages at the building, and many problems are due to “wear and tear.”
QBE and its South Florida attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. According to the answer the company filed to the lawsuit, “some of the plaintiff’s alleged damages would be excluded … for wear and tear, decay, deterioration and the like” and for “rust or other corrosion, decay, deterioration, hidden or latent defect or any quality in the property that causes it to damage or destroy itself free credit report and score.”
Rosenbaum already won an $8.14 million judgment against QBE on behalf of Chalfonte Condominium in Boca Raton last year. But the Buckley case, he said, is far more dire.
“The people at Chalfonte were able to make repairs themselves and then argue over money,” Rosenbaum said. “The people at Buckley Towers are not so fortunate. Many are retirees on fixed incomes.”
Buckley Towers are two Y-shaped buildings, a popular style in the late 1960s and ’70s. That configuration caught Hurricane Wilma’s winds for a sustained period on Oct. 24, 2005, according to records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Rosenbaum is presenting radar images that he says show the North Miami area was especially hard hit. He said the towers actually wracked, or twisted slightly, in 105-mph sustained winds, causing structural joints to loosen.
The building had paid a premium of $202,896 for a 12-month policy. The condo, which has an annual budget of more than $2 million, also is struggling with foreclosures.
It received a $1.2 million loan last summer from the U.S. Small Business Administration to pursue the most needed repairs. A special assessment of $1.49 million last year did not address major needs. An assessment to cover all the damages to the building would cost about $8,000 to $10,000 per unit, the homeowner’s association has estimated.