A condominium is one of a group of housing units where the homeowners own their individual unit space, and all the dwellings share ownership of common use areas.
Technically, a condominium is a collection of individual home units and common areas along with the land upon which they sit. Individual home ownership within a condominium is construed as ownership of only the air space confining the boundaries of the home. The boundaries of that space are specified by a legal document known as a Declaration, filed on record with the local governing authority. Typically, these boundaries will include the wall surrounding a condo, allowing the homeowner to make some interior modifications without impacting the common area. Anything outside this boundary is held in an undivided ownership interest by a corporation established at the time of the condominium's creation. The corporation holds this property in trust on behalf of the homeowners as a group—it may not have ownership itself.
In that case... If there are lawsuits...do they sue the developer / builder of the building assuming the problem is identified in the design / building process and not any maintenance responsibility is on the Condo Association ??? In contrast, if the problem is the maintenance...if what you say is true...nobody to sue except in case of "bad maintenance" but some contractor that may have performed bad repairs. wrbtrader
Their is Master Insurance the association takes out on the building. The master insurance will pay out to the building and individual owners will claim with their own insurance companies. All of the owners will then subrogate their claims to the insurance company who will find out who to sue for negligent repairs, incorrect inspection, or some other mistake. That is how insurance works. I lived in a condo where a fire sprinkler burst and flooded the top 7 floors and condemned the building. It is an insurance process.
The building was cleared and built and inspected numerous times. The key is what caused this building to collapse. That will take 6 months to a year. Once you find that out, THEN you know who the insurance companies will sue...
Master insurance policies are taken out on buildings and cover the entire structure. That policy is going to have a huge payout. Whooever has the master insurance policy is going to ask the association to subrogate the claims and then sue on behalf whoever was negligent with respect to the collapse. I doubt this goes back to the construction but more to the upkeep and repairs..... condos can be mismanaged and upkeep fall through the cracks.. But a compelte collapse??? wow....
If the building was on a soft base then you have to investigate how it was built and then the builder woudl be sued and then the builder would counter to the association for not proper maintenance. If something extrernal caused weakness in the structure which pancaked then the Master policy will sue the cause of that external incident. BUT what about families that lost loved ones, that is outside building insirance so there will be some class action. HOWEVER.... imagine a huge group of engineers, lawyers and local politicians fighting over the cause and who is at fauly. This will take a year.
Seeing that all the developers of the building are all dead and their firm is no longer in existence -- I don't think the builders will be held accountable. "All of the principals believed to have been involved in the design and construction of the building are already dead, the outlet said." https://www.foxnews.com/us/develope...e-once-accused-of-paying-off-officials-report The Condo tower was built 40 years ago.
Well you don't need the bodies as long as the entities still exist. But again, until they find out what happened it is still up in the air. If the building was way overdue for a maintenance upgrade then it is on the building itself or whoever was responsible for not doing it sooner. As I said this will take up to a year to find actual true fault form original design/construction to any company who did maintenance work, to people responsible for inspecting and missing something, to local construction that might have weakend the foundation etc....