The partial collapse of the condo near Miami Beach has been one of the biggest news stories of the year so far outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. With it have come a lot of lessons for building managers to take with them into the future to prevent such an incident from happening again and to avoid liability in personal injury and wrongful death claims.
Here are a few of the biggest takeaways from the story from a liability perspective:
- Quick action is crucial: Reports indicated there was evidence of major structural damage to foundational concrete and other elements of the building as far back as three years ago. Building managers must always take quick action to resolve safety issues when they come up rather than deferring maintenance. Knowledge of these issues combined with a failure to act can result in liability for accidents.
- Routine maintenance helps avoid major failures: Building managers don’t necessarily have to have known about a defect in the structure to be liable for resulting injuries. A simple failure to keep up with maintenance in a building could result in liability, if it can be proved a person should reasonably have known the consequences of deferred maintenance.
- When a disaster occurs, you can’t be too careful: After the collapse of the condo, inspections were ordered for numerous other local buildings, and plans were made to demolish the remainder of the building to avoid it coming down on its own. Putting these plans in place is important to prevent further accidents from occurring.
For more information about premises liability cases or construction accidents and the steps to take if you’ve been injured, contact an experienced Bradenton, FL personal injury lawyer at Goldman, Babboni, Fernandez & Walsh.