MIAMI – Two Little Havana business owners and their investors are amping up their language in a newly-amended lawsuit against the city of Miami, Commissioner Joe Carollo and other top officials.
The lawsuit, filed in the fall, is separate from one that Ball & Chain owners Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla won in a $63.5 million verdict against Carollo last summer. That came after a federal jury found that the commissioner violated their civil rights by weaponizing city resources to retaliate against them for supporting a political opponent.
The amended lawsuit centers around the economic damages the plaintiffs say Carollo and other city officials inflicted upon them. The court had ordered the plaintiffs to better elaborate on how they claim each specific defendant financially damaged them.
Lawyers filed the 124-page document Friday.
It names several defendants besides Carollo and the city of Miami, describing them as part of “Carollo’s Cabal”: City Manager Art Noriega, City Attorney Victoria Mendez, Assistant City Attorney Rachel Dooley, Building Director Asael Marrero, Zoning Director Daniel Goldberg, Chief of Staff William Ortiz, building official Luis Torres, Miami Fire Rescue Asst. Chief and Fire Marshal Adrian Plascencia, Chief of Unsafe Structures Rene Diaz and code board member Yvonne Bayona.
The plaintiffs argue the group aided and abetted Carollo’s vengeful quest to crack down on business owners who supported his rival.
The amended complaint singles out Mendez and states that she “operates as the Black Widow for Carollo, in much the same manner as Griselda Blanco Restrepo operated as the Black Widow for the Medellin Cartel.”
Blanco, part of Miami’s 1980s cocaine wars, was recently the subject of a Netflix documentary. Local 10 News has also posted a series of archived reports about the notorious trafficker.
Jeff Gutchess, the plaintiffs’ attorney, referred to the Griselda analogy as a “rhetorical flourish” during a news conference Monday.
Legal analyst David Weinstein, who’s not involved in the case, weighed in on the decision to make a pop culture reference.
“By giving it that local flavor, in light of documentaries that have been aired and things that fresh in people’s mind, the plaintiffs obviously feel that this will get people’s attention so they’ll understand when they’re hearing about what’s in the complaint, what they say has happened to them in the course of their business life,” Weinstein said.
He continued, “It’s not unusual to me, now, in the day of social media where what we write is not confined to just the courthouse, but rather anybody who has access to the documents, now uses them and publishes them, and so the court of public opinion becomes very important. Now, they have to be careful, because the defendants will try to use that against them when it comes time to select a jury in this matter.”
Weinstein said opposing attorneys could try to claim that the plaintiffs “inflamed the potential jury pool, that they’ve put things out there that they haven’t proven. So you have to be careful with the words you use.”
He said the amended lawsuit represents the potential of years of additional litigation and a financial award that may dwarf the $63.5 million Fuller and Pinilla won in 2023.
“If you look at each count, they break it down. This is how much money this business lost and they’re seeking punitive damages and they’re seeking to recover the legal fees that they had to spend and the loss that they suffered,” Weinstein said. “So this one is going to be a much bigger ticket in terms of the economic loss that was allegedly suffered.”
Carollo has consistently maintained he’s done nothing wrong and has taken multiple opportunities to publicly disparage the plaintiffs.
A Miami city spokesperson responded to the new filing Monday.
“Plaintiffs have seemingly restructured the order of many wholesale portions of the original complaint into a different format in the amended complaint. Along with new graphics and name-calling, they seem to be making the same allegations that were previously dismissed,” a city of Miami statement reads.
The statement said the city is “examining the amended complaint carefully to determine what new allegations, if any, are made in this version” and will “respond accordingly.”
Amended complaint: