A special education teacher is seeking more than $50M in damages after she was injured when a piece of a crane fell off of a 710-foot-tall tower and landed on a Tesla in Downtown Fort Lauderdale.
Gemmalyn Castillo, who was a passenger in the rideshare that was crushed by the crane on April 4, filed suit Thursday against the developer and construction firms building Gables Riverwalk, alleging negligence and demanding compensation.
Castillo suffered severe head and facial injuries as a result of the collapse, according to the suit. The collapse killed one person and two others were reported to have minor injuries.
Castillo “could only think of her four (4) children as she thought she was going die when locked inside the crushed Tesla while bleeding from her open head wound,” her lawyer, Judd Rosen of Miami-based Goldberg & Rosen, wrote in the suit, filed in Broward County Circuit Court.
The suit names Kast Construction, the West Palm Beach-based general contractor, on the apartment project; Maxim Crane Works, a Pennsylvania-based crane rental service; Phoenix Rigging & Electric, which specializes in crane construction and is based in Georgia; GC Riverwalk, the entity that owns the property; and Gables Residential, the tower’s Atlanta-based developer.
Riverwalk Residences, located at 333 N. New River Drive E., is a 43-story apartment project with 295 units and 340 parking spaces. Gables paid $33M for the site in November 2021, property records indicate, and broke ground on the project the next month.
Construction resumed on April 8, four days after the collapse that also killed 27-year-old construction worker Jorge De La Torre. The partial collapse occurred as crews were increasing the crane’s height by adding a piece in a process known as stepping. The section of the crane fell on the Southeast Third Avenue Bridge, crushing multiple cars and sending the scene into chaos. Castillo was able to crawl out of the vehicle after it was crushed.
#Breaking: Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Crane collapse on bridge injures (2) and kills (1).
— World News Global (@WorldNewsGb) April 4, 2024
Emergency crews on scene. Witnesses report two loud crashes. Situation developing.#FortLauderdale #CraneCollapse pic.twitter.com/pGsQE9ouWx
The suit includes 15 total counts of negligence against all defendants and alleges Kast “breached its duty of care and departed from the prevailing industry standards” in its role as general contractor.
The reasons listed range from failure to properly inspect the crane and taking shortcuts to speed the project's construction to failing to protect Castillo and vehicle traffic as well as “other acts of negligence yet to be discovered.”
The Occupational and Health Administration is also investigating the accident.
Kast Construction and Gables Residential didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Castillo teaches autistic children at Quiet Waters Elementary in Deerfield Beach, and her attorneys said she has been unable to work since the accident, according to Miami’s NBC news affiliate.
“If you’re going to do construction like that, shut the street down so that nobody is dying or suffering from brain damage,” one of Castillo’s attorneys said at a Friday press conference, NBC reported.
In September, a concrete slab was pushed out of a building and crushed a car on Brickell Avenue in Miami, where a property is being demolished to make way for a supertall office tower. No one was injured in that incident.
Developers have been found liable for huge sums in similar situations. Greystar was ordered to pay $860M when a construction crane it was operating in Dallas fell into an apartment building in 2019, killing one person, injuring five and forcing hundreds of residents to move after the building was deemed uninhabitable.
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