MIAMI – The Little Havana businessmen who won a $63 million civil verdict against Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo have their sights set on the longtime politician’s Coconut Grove home in an effort to recoup a portion of the judgment.
But a defiant Carollo told Local 10 News on Thursday that he’s confident his home will remain in his hands.
The six-bedroom, five-bathroom home has been the subject of three separate legal cases: First when he ran for office, then during Miami’s redistricting process and now in connection with a writ of execution related to the federal civil suit he lost to businessmen Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla.
A federal civil jury found Carollo responsible for violating the First Amendment rights of Fuller and Pinilla, who accused the commissioner of targeting them as retaliation for supporting his political rival.
An irreverent Carollo said Thursday that he didn’t have much to offer the pair, save for things like “old furniture,” “underwear” and “socks.”
“I have homestead rights, they cannot take my home,” he said.
But the entrepreneurs’ attorney, Jeff Gutchess, told Local 10 News on Friday that Carollo’s home is definitely up for grabs.
“During his deposition, we told him, ‘We are going to take your house’ and he laughed at us, but we are going to seize his home,” Gutchess said.
Gutchess believes that U.S. Marshals, under the recent order, will be able to seize the property to satisfy a portion of the massive legal judgement.
“Commissioner Carollo moved out of that house and established his residency in Little Havana in 2017 and he remained there for the following six years as a resident of Little Havana, not Coconut Grove, up until the trial was starting,” he said.
In a separate legal case, Carollo is on the record saying he moved out of the Grove home and into a Little Havana apartment in District 3 to comply with election residency requirements.
“He litigated in court to prove he had left that (Grove) home and lived in Little Havana and he won that litigation so there is a court order already saying he did not live in that home,” Gutchess said.
Local 10 News Reporter Christina Vazquez asked Carollo about it all Thursday.
“The plaintiffs’ attorney is arguing since you moved out your home to run for District 3, at that moment, you lost your homestead,” Vazquez told Carollo.
The commissioner responded dismissively.
“Listen, he can make whatever argument he wants,” Carollo said. “What I lost, when I ran for District 3, is the tax benefit. That’s got nothing to do with the Florida statutes that give me the protection of homestead if you live in it and I am living in it.”
Gutchess said Carollo is “making up the law.”
“If that were the law, everyone could move out of their house and rent somewhere else and keep their homestead and, of course, that is not what the law is,” Gutchess said.
So who’s right?
“Technically, they are both right, for different reasons,” legal analyst David Weinstein said. ”So don’t expect the Marshals to be coming with the big padlock for the front door and evicting the commissioner and his family from the house anytime soon.”
Local 10 News asked Weinstein to review public records, including one that shows no homestead exemptions on the property.
“While he was out of the house, he lost the homestead exemption,” Weinstein said. “According to the tax rolls, the commissioner lost that homestead exemption a number of years ago.”
But Weinstein added that that doesn’t prevent Carollo from arguing in court that homestead began anew Jan. 1, before the writ of execution authorizing the U.S. Marshals to seize his assets.
“Now, he may have moved back into that home with his wife as of Jan. 1 of this year and that is yet to reflect on the property records,” he said.
Carollo claims his home is shielded from seizure since he is now living in it after the city created new voting maps during redistricting, which added his Grove home into District 3.
A related federal trial over Miami’s voting maps is scheduled to begin later in January.
“It is after the judgment, but he has now declared it his homestead, they are now trying to attach property to the judgment, after Jan. 1 of this year,” Weinstein said. “So if now he declares that to be his homestead again, then he can make an argument that it is exempt because it is my homestead.”
But there’s even more to this complicated case.
In May, just as his federal civil trial was wrapping up, Carollo worked to file a quit claim deed, adding his wife’s name to the title. That way, it would read “husband and wife” to create what is called “an estate by the entireties,” with the likely aim to protect the home from seizure, explains Weinstein.
Quit claim deed:
“The importance of an ‘estate by the entireties’ is that it protects the spouses from judgments that are entered against one or the other,” Weinstein said.
But the move appears to have failed. Online records state “unable to process sale due to deed errors.”
“For some reason, the clerk didn’t accept that deed, although it was duly recorded and dated, interestingly enough, not quite a couple of weeks before the final judgment that was entered on June 1 against him in the case they are trying to take the property to satisfy the judgment,” Weinstein said.
Gutchess believes that failure is good news for his clients.
“He did that because if something is marital property it is harder for us to seize and execute our judgment on,” he said. “But he failed to do it effectively and the judgment came out on June 1 and we recorded our judgment on June 1, so we have priority over any attempt by Carollo to give his wife an interest in his home.”
Don’t expect a quick resolution to any of this, Weinstein said. He noted that the case will be played out in different courts.
“This is not something that can be answered today, but something that is going to be answered down the road,” he said.