Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo to lose appeal on $63.5 million judgement

Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo may have won the special election in District 4 this week with his puppet candidate, but he lost in court on the same day when the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals basically laughed at his feeble attempt to get out of the $63.5 million jury award given to a pair of Little Havana businessmen in 2023 after they sued Carollo and the city for violating their First Amendment rights.
The court has not yet issued its ruling, but the reaction from the three panel judges at oral arguments Tuesday seem to indicate that they are going to flatly deny his appeal because, well, it’s ridiculous. They kept asking the same questions, which were never answered, and kept interrupting Carollo’s lawyers, who were making the same moot point over and over again. Hear the whole thing here.
This could be the end of the line for Carollo’s appeals. He could try to go to a full court hearing or the U.S. Supreme Court, but it’s doubtful that either will take the case after the ruling comes out, if the ruling reflects the oral arguments.
This is that Ball & Chain thing. The owners of the historic bar in Little Havana were targeted by Carollo shortly after he was elected in 2017 because his opponent, Alfie Leon — who lost by a scant 252 votes — had his watch party there. Carollo sicced code enforcement not only on the Calle Ocho watering hole but also on other businesses that were owned by William “Bill” Fuller and his partners and associates, or businesses that lease properties from them.
At one point, the city shut Ball & Chain and Taquerias El Mexicano down.
Read related: Jury says Miami’s Joe Carollo abused power to violate 1st Amendment rights
Fuller and one of his partners, Martin Pinilla, sued Carollo and the city in federal court in 2021 for violating their First Amendment rights. After 18 months, 24 days in court, and the testimony of many in the city’s senior staff — including the former city manager, two former police chiefs and two of Carollo’s former chiefs of staff — a jury found that Carollo had targeted these businesses for political retaliation.

The appeal was based on the fact that Zack Bush, one of Fuller’s partners, had gone into the same elevator with Juror #3 in the case and said something to the effect of him following her. Carollo’s attorneys argued it was a threat and that the court should reverse the ruling against the commissioner or call for a new trial because the lower court judge never talked to Bush.
The appeals court judges found that the encounter was “harmless,” and pointed out two things that seem important: (1) The juror didn’t feel threatened at all and said she could continue to be unbiased. And (2) One of Carollo’s attorneys in the case — and Ladra suspects it was Benjamin Kuehne — complimented the judge on the thoroughness of the investigation into the interaction, and even suggested that the judge talk to all the jurors and issue an instruction order, which the judge did.
“So why was it not enough? It has to be contact about a matter pending before the jury,” one judge said. “It wasn’t about the lawsuit.” The juror, she said, “didn’t seem to perceive it” as a threat. “Isn’t that the inquiry that matters?”
“The only reason it would be relevant would be to show us that it biased the jury,” another judge concurred. “That’s the part that I’m missing.”
Carollo’s attorney wanted the three-judge panel to make presumption of prejudice and said the lower court judge could not “analyze the influence” had on the juror without interviewing Bush.
One judge disagreed because even if there had been an attempt to rattle a juror, it didn’t work.”The only reason it would be relevant is if the jury was biased,” she said.
“Suppose Mr. Bush had been plotting for two months that he is going to run into a juror at the elevator and he is going to do all manner of things,” another judge added. “What we know is exactly what happened in that incident and how it affected the jury. What does it matter what Mr. Bush intended or planned or anything of the sort?”
Jeff Gutchess, the attorney for the Fuller et al, also said that Kuehne could have but never asked for that juror to be excused and for an alternate juror to be seated. And that the strength of the evidence caused the judge to write a scathing ruling that said Carollo “used his position of power to weaponize city government against plaintiffs because plaintiffs chose to exercise their first amendment rights by supporting defendant’s political opponent.
“He said that this weaponization continued long after the plaintiffs had filed suit,” Gutchess said, “and he said that during that time the weaponization was ‘continuous and unrelenting,’ and that’s a quote, and then he says, and it ‘specifically targeted the plaintiff’s financial vulnerabilities by attempting to shut down their tenants business.
“He called this intentional and malicious, reprehensible and a shock to the conscience,” Gutchess said. He basically reargued his case before the panel, saying that any elevator chat was “inconsequential in light of the avalanche of evidence we had against Mr. Carollo.” He brought up testimony about city staff meetings about targeting Fuller’s businesses and lists created to do so.
Within six months of those meetings, Gutchess said, Ball & Chain and Taquerias El Mexicano were shut down.
Read related: Ball & Chain to reopen after years of city harassment by Joe Carollo’s hand
Fuller’s attorney also mentioned former Police Chief Art Acevedo‘s arrival to the city in 2021, when he was driven from the airport to the taqueria at 12:30 a.m. on Easter Sunday to watch live as the city manager oversaw a raid with “more than 12 officers” in bulletproof vests and helmets with guns — all to check for a permit.
The real reason? “Simply to terrorize Mr. Fuller.”
Gutchess also mentioned how Carollo is constantly calling Fuller a “corrupt mafioso” on Spanish-language radio, saying that the Little Havana booster takes money from the Venezuelan government, which actually is a safety hazard in that neighborhood. He said Fuller has lost tenants and business opportunities, bank financing and that Greenberg Traurig stopped representing them because they were afraid of Carollo’s wrath.
“And The Smithsonian Institution that had been committed to open up a museum on Cuban American history pulled out because of this harassment from Joe Carollo.”
That’s new information. Ladra didn’t know that.
An official ruling could take a few days or a few weeks to be written, but Ladra expects a sharp denial based on these oral arguments.
The next question is: Can the city now get reimbursed by Carollo for the legal fees that taxpayers have paid for his defense?
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The post Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo to lose appeal on $63.5 million judgement appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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