Cleveland has landed a legal settlement in a dispute over a collapsed building on Coit Road with ties to a French-speaking island in the South Pacific. 

The legal fight centered on a two-story brick apartment building that partially collapsed on New Year’s Eve 2022. It was unoccupied at the time, according to Cleveland’s law department. The city demolished the building at a cost of nearly $154,000. 

The limited liability company landlord sued the city, a property manager, an insurance company and the demolition contractor. The building owner blamed the property manager for the collapse and faulted the city for its “unwarranted and complete destruction” of the building. 

During the nearly two-year legal battle, it came to light that the LLC’s representative was based in New Caledonia, a French territory several hundred miles off the coast of Australia. 

The city insisted that the representative come to Cleveland for an in-person deposition. The company asked for a Zoom call instead because it would take two days to travel thousands of miles to Ohio. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John J. Russo took the city’s side.  

The case settled. Cleveland will receive $100,000, the city said — not quite the cost of demolishing that building on Coit Road. 

Cleveland Law Director Mark Griffin described the episode as symbolic of the city’s struggle with landlords based far away.

“We’re going to try to hold them accountable every way we can, and we’re not going to give in,” Griffin said of out-of-town landlords. “If we can find them, we will go after them.”

Chuck Royer, the attorney for the landlord, pointed out that his client is receiving money from the settlement, too; $300,000 is coming from other companies that the landlord sued, he said. A portion of that is going to the city.