MIAMI – Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo addressed the latest legal volley Friday related to the federal civil case he lost.
A jury found him responsible for violating the First Amendment rights of two Little Havana businessmen and awarded a $63.5 million legal judgement.
The U.S. Marshals posted a notice: the commissioner’s Coconut Grove home will be sold at public auction to help satisfy that judgment. Carollo has asked the court to stop that from happening.
The plaintiffs, Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, are now asking for a hearing.
Latest legal filing:
With less than a month before his Morris Lane house is scheduled to be auctioned, with his wife by his side at a Coral Way Park expansion groundbreaking ceremony Friday, Carollo addressed Fuller and Pinilla’s request for an evidentiary hearing, which claps back against Carollo’s claims that the home is protected by a homestead exemption.
“Do you see me worried?” Carollo told Local 10 News.
The plaintiffs argue that he “abandoned” his homestead when he moved out to fend off a District 3 residency qualification challenge. Commissioners later looped a portion of the Grove containing the home into District 3 during a map redraw.
The new filing references the recent searing order denying Carollo’s motion for a new trial.
“Even I was surprised just how strong of his prejudice was shown in what he wrote,” Carollo said.
The plaintiffs told the court, taken together, it underscores “the reprehensibility of (Carollo’s) misconduct and bolstering the public interest in the prompt and effective enforcement of its final judgment.”
“By federal law in order for you to appeal you have to present these motions like we did to the judge we were never under false illusions that the judge was going to deny them,” Carollo said.
Carollo said he’s looking forward to filing an appeal, “because what went on in that trial was so outrageous that there is not going to be an appellate court in the country that would let that stand.
“Of course, I am excited for my appeal,” he said. “Because I will win that appeal hands down.”
The forced auction, if Carollo doesn’t successfully stop it, is scheduled for March 19 outside the downtown Miami federal courthouse.