FIU bridge victims or their families will get their cut of $102.7 million, judge affirms
After months of litigation, the families of the six people killed and the 10-plus people injured when a bridge collapsed at Florida International University will receive their share of nearly $103 million.
On Thursday, A. Jay Cristol, senior bankruptcy judge, confirmed a plan of reorganization filed last month by Munilla Construction Management (MCM), the project’s general contractor. The $102.7 million settlement should be divvied up by mid-January if no one appeals the plan by Dec. 28.
“While MCM is pleased to successfully emerge from reorganization and is abundantly grateful for the support it received during this difficult time, it will never forget those we lost in the tragic FIU pedestrian bridge failure,” MCM President Jorge Munilla said in a statement. “While no dollar figure can replace those who were lost, MCM placed an emphasis on expediting the process to make substantial funds available for the claimants so that the length of this difficult judicial process could be significantly reduced.”
Alan Goldfarb, who represents the parents of 18-year-old Alexa Duran, who was killed in the March 15, 2018, collapse, said Thursday that the settlement is a step in the right direction. It means Gina and Orlando Duran, Alexa’s parents, can now put “a significant portion of the legal process behind them.”
“To the family who has lost a love one, they never, ever recover from that loss,” Goldfarb said. “If they could achieve a settlement of their legal issues, at least that gives them a little more peace of mind.”
In the months following the bridge collapse over Southwest Eighth Street — across from FIU’s main campus in southwest Miami-Dade — the families of the six people killed, and others who survived but were injured, sued more than 20 defendants for their roles in the tragedy.
By the end of July, all but one of the implicated companies reached settlements with the victims. Those companies included FIGG, the Tallahassee-based engineering firm that designed the 950-ton, 320-foot span.
One company, Louis Berger, an engineering consulting firm hired to double-check FIGG’s design and calculations, has not joined in the settlement.
The settlement determines how much each individual plaintiff will receive from the total pool, but those amounts are confidential.
In November, MCM filed its bankruptcy plan and Judge Cristol said he’d do his best to expedite the confirmation.
At the same time the plan was filed, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its final report on the collapse and pointed to design failures, inadequate oversight and systematic negligence.
This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 3:19 PM.
