The Plaintiff Has Met Their Burden

Old Smokey class continues without engineering firm

The plaintiff’s class action case regarding impacts from Old Smokey will proceed. In a March 20, 2026 ruling, the Honorable Spencer Eig of the Eleventh Circuit for Miami-Dade, granted and denied the motion of class certification in part.

The court granted the motion as to the claims against the City of Miami, and denied the motion for class certification as to the claims against Stearns, Conrad & Schmidt Consulting Engineers, Incorporated (SCS Engineers). The court found that no evidence was provided of the harm to the properties or of the potential harm to the individuals that was caused by SCS Engineers, who came into the situation much later.

In granting the motion against the City of Miami, the court found the plaintiffs sustained their burden of proof as to each of the necessary criteria – numerosity, commonality, typicality, adequacy, predominance, superiority – thanks to the testimony of all of the plaintiffs’ experts.

“The Plaintiff bears the burden of proof,” noted the ruling. “The Plaintiff met that burden of proof through their expert testimony. Some experts were more central to findings, some were less central, but the Plaintiff has met their burden.”

The court granted three classes: the property class, the medical monitoring class and bodily injury class.

The judge appreciated that attorneys for both sides tried “a very interesting and well tried case that’s significant.”

Plaintiffs lawyers include Patrick Montoya and Markus Kamberger of Bryson Harris Suciu DeMay, Jason Clark of Down’s Law Group and Louise Caro of Caro Law.

For more information on the Old Smokey case, visit: