Read the order. Kolter has nothing to do with the lawsuit, but they bought the property when Pearson couldn't close. The $8.1MM deal was with the two gulf front lots and the sales center, and he was settling with the bond holders (Community Development District that funded the infrastructure) to get it free and clear. I'm guessing Kolter at minimum cut a deal with the bondholders.
The judge seemed to place more weight on the commitment letter than the loan docs themselves, but the loan docs were heavily weighted favoring the debtor. The credit union tried to engineer monetary defaults and (without read the full loan docs) appeared to have overreached on technical defaults. Good case was made that they should have funded, and the judge used the bank's appraiser's value (that was ridiculously high and the bank later threw out) to determine the amount of the judgment. Oddly he ruled that as a normal course of business they weren't entitled to an appraisal review.
Of note, when the CU's CEO was asked "what is a loan commitment", he replied "I don't know". Sounds like the CU didn't do themselves any favors on the stand with that and a few other things. This will be appealed and could go either way but at the least I'd assume that the judgment is significantly reduced.
