- Kurkova and Drury filed a complaint against the Fisher Island Club last Thursday.
- The lawsuit says the club’s board of directors threatened the couple and unjustly expelled them.
- The Fisher Island Club said the complaint is nothing more than disgruntled former members.
The supermodel Karolina Kurkova and her husband, the real estate broker Archie Drury, are suing the exclusive members-only club on Fisher Island, a private island near Miami that’s home to some of the biggest — and richest — players in business and tech.
In their complaint, filed last Thursday in Miami-Dade County court, Kurkova and Drury say the club’s board of directors threatened and targeted them to strip the couple of their property interests on the island and prevent Drury from conducting business there. “Doing so allowed the Club Board to continue to engage in their illegal usurpation of control” of the island in hopes that “their wrongful conduct would not be exposed,” the lawsuit says. It accuses the club of wrongfully suspending Drury’s membership twice and says it ultimately expelled the couple from the club in January. Kurkova and Drury say the club board’s actions harmed their reputation and caused them millions of dollars in damages.
“Florida’s private clubs and HOAs operate without proper oversight, leaving property owners vulnerable to unfair governance and unchecked power,” Melanie Bonvicino, a spokesperson for Kurkova, told BI in a statement. “We believe that the time for lawmakers to act is now by implementing meaningful reforms to address these issues.”
Kurkova and Drury, who have three children, bought their first Fisher Island Club membership in 2013 for $250,000. In 2018, they purchased a second membership that was designated for an employee of theirs, according to the lawsuit. Kurkova, best known for her work as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, owns six residential units on the island, and Drury was a real estate agent for Douglas Elliman on the island from 2017 through December 2022.
The lawsuit says issues between Kurkova and Drury and the club board started shortly after Drury left Douglas Elliman to start his own brokerage company.
Two of the Fisher Island Club board members, David Chene and Mark Zeitchick, also sit on the board of directors of Douglas Elliman, which Kurkova and Drury’s lawsuit says posed “significant conflicts of interest.”
The Fisher Island Club said it “denies all of the allegations in the lawsuit as baseless and is firm in the belief that the complaint is nothing more than disgruntled former members. The Fisher Island Club looks forward to defending each of its challenged actions in detail in court filings as appropriate.”
A Range Rover and food delivery gone wrong
Fisher Island is a 216-acre artificial island just south of Miami Beach that’s accessible only by boat or helicopter. Residents have included Oprah Winfrey, the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki and her husband — the former NBA player David Lee — as well as Sintavia CEO Brian Neff and Mark Sutcliffe, who founded the software company Redzone. The Fisher Island Club is integral to residents’ social life; nearly everyone who resides on the small island is a member. The club facilities include restaurants, private beaches with sand imported from the Bahamas, a beach club and spa, a golf course, and two marinas.
The Fisher Island Club suspended Drury’s membership for six months in December 2023 after informing him via email that he had been accused of various forms of inappropriate conduct since 2021 including stealing a white Range Rover owned by another member, threatening and giving the middle finger to another club member, and acting inappropriately to a marina employee. In an email included in a December complaint Drury filed and later withdrew, the club’s secretary said Drury came into a marina office in October 2023 “screaming and visibly upset” about where marina staff members were docking a vessel owned by the retired NFL star Tom Brady. The email also said Drury’s alleged misconduct included the “general intimidation of Club management and Club members.”
In their lawsuit, Drury and Kurkova say the allegations were part of an “orchestrated effort” by the club board and its officers to “target, damage, punish, and ultimately expel” Drury and Kurkova in violation of the club’s governing documents and Florida law. They said the misconduct allegations were “patently false or grossly overstated.”
They said that the Range Rover incident, for example, was an “innocent mistake” and that Drury only drove the vehicle from a parking garage to an external parking lot before realizing he was in the wrong white Range Rover. The car’s owner did not press charges, the lawsuit says.
Two weeks later, on December 24, 2023, on Christmas Eve, Drury was at home on Fisher Island with his hungry 2-year-old daughter, according to the lawsuit. Per his suspension, Drury was not permitted at the time to use the club facilities, including the restaurants. Drury tried to place a delivery order to one of the club’s restaurants, but the wait was over an hour, the lawsuit said, so Drury walked to the restaurant, stepped one foot inside, retrieved the food for his daughter, and went home. The club issued Drury a second six-month suspension for what they called “a flagrant violation” of his initial suspension.
In November 2024, the couple received another letter from the board stating that the duo attempted to defraud the club and circumvent its rules by attempting to designate a membership to a tenant, the lawsuit says. Kurkova and Drury said in the complaint that this was permitted under the club’s bylaws for residents who own two or more residential units on the island. After an investigation into the matter, the club expelled Kurkova, Drury and their family in January.
The Douglas Elliman connection
The lawsuit accuses Chene and Zeitchick of using their club board positions to benefit Douglas Elliman rather than working in the best interests of the club and its members.
Chene, the chairman of Douglas Elliman’s board, is also the cofounder and co-managing partner of the investment firm Kennedy Lewis, which tried to buy “the last remaining significant piece of real estate” on Fisher Island, a 10-acre fuel depot owned by the energy-storage firm TransMontaigne Partners, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit says the board threatened to suspend club members who found out about the negotiations and raised concerns about the potential deal. Ultimately, the developer Related Group landed the deal, but the suit goes on to accuse Chene and Zeitchick of using their board positions to push for Douglas Elliman to exclusively broker the new development in exchange for club benefits.
The Fisher Island club said that “allegations by plaintiffs that certain Club Board members used their influence for personal or corporate gain are patently false, unjustified and are nothing short of scandalmongering.”
Kurkova and Drury are seeking a trial by jury against the Fisher Island Club. The lawsuit says Drury had been “a respected and active member of the Fisher Island community,” having served on the Fisher Island Community Association board from 2021 to 2023, a position to which he was elected. The lawsuit says Drury also spent six years helping to establish a medical clinic on the island operated by the University of Miami.
In their complaint, the couple accuses the board of abuses of power including violating the club’s bylaws, allowing two board members to remain past their term limits, and threatening other members with retaliatory suspensions if they voiced concerns about the board’s actions.
In addition to Chene and Zeitchick, the club’s board members are Robert Nydick; Andrew Zaro, whose family runs the New York bakery chain Zaro’s; and Rafael Llopiz, the CEO of Quik Park, a parking facility operator in New York City.
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