A judge tossed a lawsuit filed by condo owners at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach over short-term rental rules.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Peter R. Lopez determined a group of unit owners at the two condo buildings at the Fontainebleau resort have no standing to sue, according to<\/a> Law.com. Although Lopez didn\u2019t explicitly say so, the decision may have stemmed from the condo associations\u2019 failure to include a pair of settlement agreements \u2013\u2013 which were the crux of plaintiffs\u2019 arguments \u2013\u2013 into the associations\u2019 governing documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Six unit owners at the Tresor and Sorrento condo-hotels sued<\/a> the Fontainebleau Miami Beach and two of its affiliates in March. The resort, consisting of a historic 1,504-room hotel at 4441 Collins Avenue, is owned by billionaire Jeffrey Soffer\u2019s Aventura-based Fontainebleau Development. The Tresor and Sorrento condo-hotel buildings<\/a>, which have 748 units combined, are at 4401 and 4391 Collins Avenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n About 674 owners are enrolled in the resort\u2019s rental program, meaning the Fontainebleau<\/a> leases these units, while the rest can rent out their condos on their own using short-term rental platforms such as VRBO.\u00a0<\/p>\n In their complaint, unit owners alleged violations of the longstanding settlements that include clauses stating that condo owners who rent out their units on their own can do so \u201cwithout interference, restriction, limitation, fee or cost imposed by the hotel unit owner.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But the agreements aren\u2019t enforceable because neither the Tresor nor the Sorrento condo associations voted to incorporate the settlements in their declarations, Fontainebleau\u2019s attorneys argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot in a million years did we think that they were going to say the settlement agreement signed by their parties \u2014 which they have abided by for 20 years, they were going to say that they\u2019re not applicable,\u201d Matthew Estevez, the condo associations\u2019 attorney, said during the hearing, the publication reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ruling was unexpected, and plaintiffs and their attorneys have to go back to square one to determine how to continue their suit, Estevez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In their complaint, the six unit owners argued that Fontainebleau is pressuring them to use the in-house rental program by implementing regulations for them to lease out their condos on their own. These unit owners now have to be physically present or use an approved agent during guest check ins, pay higher housekeeping costs and are barred from using the Fontainebleau name<\/a> to market their units without approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n The owners\u2019 emergency motion to stop these regulations failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fontainebleau has said these rules are for the health and safety of staff and guests, and that non-program users don\u2019t have to pay the housekeeping costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Across South Florida, condo-hotels are a common mixed-use development, often carrying a brand name such as the W Hotel, Four Seasons, Carillon and Mr. C.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sean Burstyn, the Fontainebleau\u2019s attorney, told the publication that new condo-hotels in the pipeline \u201cwould benefit from incorporating\u201d the Fontainebleau\u2019s litigation arguments in their declarations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge tossed a lawsuit filed by condo owners at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach over short-term rental rules.\u00a0\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[118931,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-278625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-fontainebleau-short-term-rental","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}