Caroline Weiss’ legal battle with her eldest daughter for control of a 7-acre development site in Miami’s Blue Lagoon district appears to be over.
On May 29, the Third District Court Of Appeals affirmed a 2022 lower court ruling that dismissed Adeena Weiss-Ortiz’s 10-year-old lawsuit against her mother and entities that own the three-property waterfront assemblage on Northwest 7th Street and Northwest 48th Avenue.
Weiss-Ortiz’s attorney Maurice Baumgarten did not respond to a request for comment.
The appellate decision puts “an end to this decade-long attack by Ms. Weiss’ estranged daughter” and removed a cloud over the title to the development site, said Michael Schlesinger, Weiss’ attorney, in an email.
“This latest victory confirming that Caroline Weiss is the sole owner of the properties will remove all obstacles so that she can develop or refinance the Blue Lagoon project in the near future with interested suitors waiting in the wings,” Schlesinger said.
Five years ago, Weiss’ firm Weiss Group of Companies won approval from the city of Miami to double the development site’s maximum building height from eight to 16 stories. At the time, Weiss Group, which is also co-led by Weiss’ other daughter Alitza Weiss, planned a mixed-use project with 882 apartments and 433 hotel rooms.
But Weiss Ortiz’s litigation stymied the project from moving forward.
In 2014, Weiss Ortiz sued her mother, alleging that Weiss illegally obtained title to the Blue Lagoon development site. Weiss Ortiz’s lawsuit alleged that she and her sister, Aliza Weiss, were the true owners of the assemblage. Her mother illegally transferred ownership of the three properties to herself without her daughters’ consent in the early 2000s, the complaint alleged.
Alitza and Caroline Weiss submitted court affidavits in 2021 denying Weiss Ortiz’s allegations. A year later, after a bench trial, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Migna Sanchez-Llorens ruled against Weiss Ortiz, dismissing her lawsuit.
Sanchez-Llorens determined that Weiss Ortiz’s claims that the development site was originally deeded to her and her sister by their mother in 1995 were not credible, the judge’s order shows. Weiss Ortiz provided inconsistent sworn testimony, did not present any documentary evidence to prove her case and the statute of limitations had expired to make a legal claim, Sanchez-Llorens’ ruling states.
The appeals court also dismissed Weiss Ortiz’s petition to overturn a 2022 ruling by another Miami-Dade judge dismissing another lawsuit she filed against TIG Romspen, a lender that provided a $21.3 million loan to the entities that own the Blue Lagoon site.
Last year, TIG Romspen filed a pending foreclosure lawsuit against the Blue Lagoon ownership entities. The complaint alleges that Weiss failed to pay off $13.1 million of the mortgage debt that matured in October 2022 and failed to pay property taxes between 2020 and 2022. TIG Romspen recently filed a motion for summary judgment.