Waiting to go home

By Donna Gehrke-White

Special to The Miami Herald

Fabienne “Faye” Adam thought she smelled burnt toast. Actually, it was a fire that had erupted in her part of the Century Village condo building in Deerfield Beach.

Dressed in a nightgown, she rushed out through the smoke that night in July 2005.

Adam, 80, has not lived in her cozy apartment since.

She and owners of eight other units in the village’s Ventnor “B” building were forced out of their damaged homes and have not been able to live in them since. Along the way there have been lawsuits, hearings, a bankrupt insurance company, Hurricane Wilma and building code revisions — but no completed renovation.

Now, nearly six years later, the damaged units are still considered “unsafe structures” and uninhabitable, with yellow tape warning people to stay away. Two elderly owners have died.

“You lose everything – I don’t know where to begin,’’ said Adam, who is president of the building’s condo association . “It’s a hole that has no bottom … All of a sudden everything is gone.’’

“I do not know what it has taken so long,’’ said Daniel Britto, an attorney who represents an insurance brokerage company, Plastridge Agency, one of the defendants named in a lawsuit by the burned-out owners. The agency’s executives have “done as much as they could” to resolve the longstanding issue, said Britto, who added that the court cases — and even appeals — should have been settled by now.

Joseph D. Garrity, attorney for the association, agrees. But, he said, the legal issues remain far from resolved.

The plight of the Ventnor “B” owners is a lesson for all condo owners: Make sure you are familiar with your building’s insurance and that you are properly insured, said Jan Bergemann, a statewide grassroots activist who runs Cyber Citizens for Justice. In one case, owners found out after a fire that their condo association hadn’t taken out insurance. “They are the ones who are suffering,’’ he said.

Read more straight from The Miami Herald at: Franchise Attorney Blog


Franchise Lawyer - Franchise Attorney GARRITY-WEISS, P.A