Miami commissioner calls for Carollo to pay back millions in legal fees to city
Could Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo be on the hook to pay back millions of dollars that the city spent defending him in a federal civil lawsuit that resulted in a $63 million judgment?
One Miami commissioner thinks so.
Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela, a Carollo rival, is asking the city to “institute a civil action” to recover attorneys’ fees and costs paid from public funds for Carollo’s defense in the lawsuit brought by Little Havana businessmen Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla. In 2023, a jury awarded them a $63.5 million judgment, finding that Fuller and Pinilla were victims of a political retaliation campaign pushed by Carollo.
Gabela is also asking that the city halt payments in any further proceedings in the case. The City Commission is expected to take up the items at its Sept. 11 meeting. Gabela wasn’t available for an interview Thursday.
Gabela’s proposal is the latest development in the rivalry between the two commissioners, whose arguments at public meetings have erupted into screaming matches.
But the issue isn’t totally new to Gabela, who put forward legislation earlier this year to halt the upfront payment of legal fees to outside counsel for elected officials.
“The bleeding needs to stop,” Gabela said in the spring, pointing specifically to Carollo’s legal fees. After facing resistance from his colleagues, Gabela settled on legislation that requires the city attorney to inform the commission when fees for a case exceed $250,000. It passed 3-1, with Carollo voting no.
Reached for comment Thursday on the new proposal, Carollo alleged that Gabela’s efforts to recoup legal fees were politically motivated ahead of the upcoming November city election. Carollo has been weighing a run for mayor but has not formally filed yet.
“This is all part of the game,” Carollo said. He added that, “legally, there’s no merit” to Gabela’s proposal.
Gabela’s proposed legislation follows a July ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals, which blocked Carollo’s effort to overturn the $63 million verdict. The appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling denying Carollo’s motion for a mistrial. Carollo’s legal team has asked for a rehearing in the case.
In justifying why Carollo should be on the hook to foot the bill for his defense, Gabela’s proposal cites a Florida statute that states that attorneys’ fees paid from public funds for an officer or employee “who is found to be personally liable by virtue of acting outside the scope of his or her employment, or was acting in bad faith, with malicious purpose” may be recovered by the municipality in a civil action against said employee.
Gabela’s proposed legislation does not include an exact dollar amount, and City Attorney George Wysong did not respond to a question Thursday asking how much money the city has spent defending Carollo in the case.
But in a lawsuit filed last year by the city’s insurer, QBE Specialty Insurance Company said Carollo’s defense in that lawsuit and other related cases has exceeded $10 million.
QBE argued that it cannot be held responsible for covering the eight-figure legal bill, pointing in part to a declaration from the Florida Supreme Court that “one should not be able to insure against one’s own intentional misconduct.”
“The fundamental premise underlying each and every one of the Underlying Lawsuits is that Carollo — through his own actions and by conscripting others to do his bidding — engaged in a years-long campaign of retaliation and harassment with the conscious objective of inflicting harm on the underlying plaintiffs,” QBE wrote in its complaint.
Even if Gabela’s legislation is successful, getting Carollo to pay up may prove to be difficult. To date, Carollo has yet to pay any of the $63 million judgment against him.
Speaking to the Herald on Thursday, he said he simply doesn’t have the money. His Coconut Grove home, as well as his wages as a city commissioner, have both been protected by the courts and cannot be collected to satisfy the judgment.
The city agreed to a $12.5 million settlement in a separate but related Fuller lawsuit last year. Meanwhile, another related case is still ongoing in federal court, although Carollo was dismissed as a defendant in that matter last month.
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