It drove Michael Ehrenstein crazy several years ago when the managers of the Miami office tower housing his law firm, Kluger Peretz Kaplan & Berlin, decided to recaulk the granite panels that form the building's exterior shell.

Ehrenstein, 39, is a trial lawyer, but he's well aware of construction issues. He has made construction law his specialty since representing a condominium association beleaguered by wonky balconies some 15 years ago, just after he graduated from University of Miami law school.

That led to more building-industry cases involving parties ranging from condo owners to contractors. ''It's kind of grown around itself,'' he says.

I drove along I-95 and it looked like it was mainly the older buildings that lost a lot of glazing. What happens is that the glass is sort of glued on to the outside of the building and that caulking dries out and cracks as it ages. It needs to be redone and replaced because it only takes one -- once one window pops out, its makes the entire glazing susceptible. That's a property maintenance negligence issue.

If the newer buildings lost a lot of glazing, it would raise some questions for me whether the glazing was properly installed and whether or not proper materials were used, whether workmen didn't follow all the specifications that go along with the material in some manner. For those newer structures, there might be claims against developers and contractors. The developers' warranty may be in place.

It's an interesting question. There's a great old case that set up the concept of ''foreseeability.'' If your failure to do something that should be done would foreseeably cause injury, then you can be held accountable for that. If my failure to maintain the window caulking in a timely manner could reasonably be foreseen to cause injury, I'm liable.

That raises questions about the nature of weather that passed through there. I'm not a weather expert, but my understanding is that hurricanes like Wilma sometimes spawn tornadoes. While I think these glazing systems are capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds, they're not designed to withstand tornadoes, which may be substantially stronger. So there may not be a claim there. You'd have to get weather experts to go back and forth on that.

The cynic in me tells me there's bound to be lawsuits even if there's an insurance settlement. There's likely to be disputes over the value of the claims.

What will happen almost inevitably is that the insurer never wants to be the only pocket that's paying out. So they turn around and bring in third parties -- the contractor, the subcontractor, the materials supplier, the architect. There are so many people involved in the construction of a building, there's almost always someone else to point the finger at.

I think it seems like the building code worked properly. When you look back at Andrew, the homes were destroyed in the same manner. Roofs flew off because they weren't tied down properly. I haven't heard of huge patterns of a similar type of problem now. The one similar thing is the loss of glazing. But there could be a different reason for that for each building. At this juncture, we don't know.

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