“This should never have happened,” said Jay Cohen, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, who in 2011 won a $1.5 million settlement after suing the Florida Department of Transportation, a bridge contractor and the bridge tender in an eerily similar case. In that incident, an 80-year-old man also plunged 60 feet to his death when the Sheridan Street Bridge in Hollywood open as Desmond Nolan was walking across, records say.