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How Do Lawyers Play a Role in Holding Construction Companies and Homeowner Associations Accountable for Disasters
When disasters like the recent Surfside condo collapse happen, the first priority is to rescue any and all victims as quickly as possible. Beyond that immediate priority, victims and their family want answers. A disaster like this should never happen, and lawyers help to find the reasons why it did.
First, lawyers play a huge role in preserving evidence. In major disasters, even when governmental agencies are involved, critical evidence can be lost. By filing lawsuits and motions for emergency injunctions, attorneys working on behalf of victims can help ensure that physical evidence and documents are not destroyed. The earlier lawyers get involved to do this, the better chance victims have of ensuring the site be inspected by experts before the rubble is cleared and that valuable evidence is not lost. That is crucial for delivering justice to those impacted.
Further, a wide range of experts are needed in these situations to provide important context. There are often complex and non-apparent issues at play, and lawyers with experience in these cases, like we have here at Morgan & Morgan, work with experts in all of the relevant fields to evaluate every nook and cranny of potential problems, allowing us to identify every wrongdoer. Only with a full understanding of all those whose actions and inactions caused a tragedy like the Surfside condo collapse can we hold the proper entities accountable.
Beyond these material actions attorneys can take, it is key to understand that lawyers are there to work and fight for those affected by the disaster. With the Surfside condo collapse, for instance, the Condo Board is telling its residents not to hire lawyers. Why would they do that? It’s because they do not want to have to pay the claims brought against them for their potential negligence and misconduct. We see it happen every time there is a preventable disaster like this. The parties responsible for causing it feign outrage that attorneys are getting involved, because they are the ones that stand to lose something.
Attorneys for affected residents and neighbors are on their side; they are the only ones who are truly looking out for the individuals and families who suffer the most in these disasters.
Even public agencies, who are crucial to the search and rescue missions as well as to the investigation into what happened, are not there to resolve the issues faced by impacted individuals and families. The government may help uncover what happened, but they will not fix how people were wronged. It is our job at Morgan & Morgan to get those answers. While the government’s role is to have prevented this from happening to begin with, attorneys are here to get justice and compensation for victims once it happens.
Without attorneys, these companies and private entities often face little to no consequences for their misconduct. We at Morgan & Morgan fight on behalf of every person impacted by a building collapse to ensure the wrongdoers pay and change their behavior going forward.