Kelley | Uustal attorneys Todd Falzone and Josiah Graham have obtained a $1 million settlement against Circle One Condominium, Inc. and Benchmark Property Management, Inc. in the shooting death of Jeffrey J. Brown on Father’s Day 2019 in Lauderhill.
Brown, who was 31, was killed outside one of the condo buildings just before midnight on Father’s Day, June 16, 2019, at the Circle One Condominium complex on Northwest 56th Avenue in Lauderhill.
Brown’s children include a 5-month-old, an 8-year-old, and a 10-year-old, two of whom were home at the time of the shooting. His youngest child was born seven months after he was killed.
The Kelley | Uustal investigation discovered that despite hundreds of police reports involving crimes in the complex, the property had a non-functional guard gate, a guard house that never housed any security guards, and some non-functioning “decoy cameras,” but no actual security at all to protect the residents.
“That means there was zero security at a complex where numerous violent criminal acts, including shootings, aggravated assaults, rapes, and robberies, had taken place,” said Falzone, who noted that the owners had fired their security guard service two years prior to Brown’s shooting.
The lawsuit says the defendants failed to “police, patrol, guard, deter, and otherwise provide adequate protection for its tenants, invitees, and the public,” and did not warn residents and others
of the property’s “dangerous conditions.”
No one has been arrested in the shooting. A wrongful-death lawsuit against the condo association for Brown’s killing continues.
“There was absolutely nothing that the defendants in this case did to help prevent this murder, which left Jeffrey Brown’s young children without their loving father,” Graham said.
