Michael Hanzman, judge who presided over Surfside condo-collapse case, stepping down

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman, among the best-known jurists in the state after presiding over a $1.1 billion settlement in the high-profile Surfside condo-collapse case, is stepping down from the Miami-Dade bench.

The decision might surprise some in the legal community but Hanzman, 62, told the Miami Herald in an interview on Tuesday that once the complex and emotional lawsuit over the failure of Champlain Towers South was finished, he knew “it was time to move on.”

He notified Gov. Ron DeSantis of his resignation, effective at the end of the month, in a letter dated Monday. His term was going to expire in January 2025.

“I can unhesitatingly say that these twelve years of meaningful public service have been the most fulfilling and rewarding of my almost forty year professional career,” Hanzman wrote the governor, adding that he was grateful to his judicial colleagues and support staff.

In an interview, Hanzman said the “next chapter”of his legal career could be in the private sector or even in another judicial capacity, on the state appellate court, the Florida Supreme Court or the federal court. He said he has not made up his mind.

After a dozen years on the circuit court, Hanzman said he “struggled mightily with this [resignation] decision because I love being a judge.” He admitted that he had been thinking about resigning a couple of years ago, feeling that he had accomplished a significant body of work on the bench. But then the biggest case of his career landed on his lap — the class-action negligence case pitting the survivors of the June 24, 2021, Champlain Towers South collapse in which 98 people died against their own condominium association, engineers, contractors, developers and other defendants.

“I was going to see that case through whether it took a decade or forever,” Hanzman told the Herald.

Although his reputation as a lawyer and judge was well-known in South Florida legal circles, Hanzman was not a familiar face to the hundreds of families who lost their relatives and condo units in the shocking collapse of the Champlain Towers South at 8777 Collins Ave.

They quickly learned that Hanzman not only possessed a sharp legal mind and fearless demeanor but he could also be compassionate and tough in dealing with what was clearly the most emotionally fraught case of his career. As the judge, he guided the case through a massive settlement, the $120 million sale of the nearly two-acre oceanfront property, and deciding on compensation for families who lost their condos and their loved ones.

“I can’t put into words how much that case meant to me — I wish I’d never seen it,” Hanzman told the Herald. “I was presented with a challenge, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually. It was all consuming. I will never quite be the same. It took its toll.”

Lawyers familiar with and involved in the landmark case said Hanzman has the uncanny ability to see exactly where a complex case is going and bring it to a resolution, noting that the Surfside condo litigation lasted only 14 months before a settlement was reached, signed and approved by him.

His handling of the Surfside case set the standard by which all other mass-casualty litigation will be judged in the future, said attorney Michael Goldberg, who was appointed by Hanzman as the receiver for the Champlain Towers South condominium association.

“From the beginning Judge Hanzman handled the case with compassion for the victims and respectfully pushed the lawyers to move the case quickly based on his belief that ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’“ Goldberg said. “He accomplished in one year what everyone believed at the beginning would have taken five or more years.”

“Champlain Towers South was almost a perfect case for him,” said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, who went to law school at the University of Florida with Hanzman and roomed with him in Miami after they both graduated. “The only downside of [the plaintiffs] having him as their judge is that they didn’t have him as one of their attorneys.”

“There are very few people at his level of legal clarity,” Gelber said. “He didn’t delay justice.”

Hanzman, who grew up in the Orlando area and excelled at UF’s law school, made the Miami area his home in the 1980s and quickly rose through the ranks of its elite firms as a securities and class-action litigator over the next 30 years.

After making his mark and making millions practicing law, Hanzman chose to pursue a second legal career in public service. In November 2011, Gov. Rick Scott appointed him to a vacancy on the Miami-Dade Circuit Court. He was then elected to two six-year terms during which he worked in the juvenile, criminal and complex litigation divisions.

Previously, in a September interview with the Herald, Hanzman reflected on the key decisions and pivotal moments in the litigation. Resolving such a complex class action in just over a year was perhaps the most unexpected result, he said.

Not only were there more than 30 defendants, from consulting engineers to contractors building a luxury condo next door, but infighting also erupted between the 136 unit owners and the families of 98 residents killed in the collapse. It was a festering dispute Hanzman likened to a “cancer” that threatened to upend any potential settlement .

In the first weeks after the collapse of the 12-story building, Hanzman made a string of calls that would prove critical, appointing Goldberg as the receiver and lawyer Bruce Greer as the mediator. The judge left the most difficult decisions — how much each life was worth — to the end, with five weeks of highly unusual and emotionally wrenching private hearings over the summer with individual families.

“I thought it was important to meet with everybody personally and give them the opportunity to talk to us about their loss, about their loved ones, about their grieving and about what we could do to help,” Hanzman told the Herald at the time. “It’s a long chain of events, and if any link isn’t taken care of, the whole thing falls apart.”