MIAMI – Monday marked another day of eye-opening testimony in the federal civil trial of Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo.
Carollo is being sued by Miami businessmen Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, for allegedly abusing his power as a commissioner to limit their free speech by harassing them and hurting their companies — all because they supported his political opponent in 2017.
Fuller and Pinilla have a significant amount of property in Carollo’s district and rent some of that out to tenants like Rosa Romero and Daniel Figueredo, owners of the popular Little Havana sandwich shop Sanguich de Miami.
When it first opened in October 2017, only weeks before Carollo was elected, Sanguich was based out of a converted storage container that sat on one of the properties owned by Fuller’s company.
Romero testified that Carollo told them he was excited by the business they were creating, but that the property they were on was “problematic.”
She told jurors they received pushback from the city every step of the way, that they believe was orchestrated by Carollo.
She said they dealt with numerous raids by code enforcement — even during major events like Calle Ocho and the Gay 8 festival — despite operating in the same way all other vendors were.
Romero told jurors those raids only came to a complete stop once they left Fuller’s property for good and opened their new brick-and-mortar location about half a mile away.
Carollo’s attorneys once again pushed back on the witnesses, saying he wasn’t targeting them. Instead, they claimed Sanguich was missing the proper permits to operate.
Romero and Figueredo insisted it was “blatantly obvious” they were being harassed and said that they felt like “collateral damage” in Carollo’s feud with Fuller and Pinilla.
The lawsuit asks for $2.6 million, plus punitive damages.