Joe Carollo and former Miami city attorney dismissed from lawsuit
Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo and former City Attorney Victoria Méndez have been dismissed from a federal lawsuit filed nearly two years ago by Little Havana businessmen Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who alleged that the commissioner carried out a yearslong campaign to put them out of business.
In the lawsuit, filed in November 2023, Fuller and Pinilla alleged that Carollo, Méndez, City Manager Art Noriega and more than two dozen other city employees caused a loss of over $60 million to them and a slew of their businesses, which include the Calle Ocho Marketplace, the Little Havana Arts Building and the Tower Hotel. The lawsuit described the defendants as “a government machine mobilized by Carollo” that “used unlimited resources of taxpayer money to corrupt City staff members” to push Fuller, Pinilla and their businesses into bankruptcy because Fuller and Pinilla backed Carollo’s opponent in the 2017 election.
Though the allegations are similar, this lawsuit is separate from the one that resulted in a $63.5 million verdict against Carollo in 2023. In another related lawsuit, the city agreed to pay out a $12.5 million settlement last year.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno dismissed Méndez from the November 2023 lawsuit, finding that she was protected by prosecutorial immunity, legislative immunity and qualified immunity. Moreno cited case law that says granting Méndez immunity in relation to the allegations at hand “serves the policy of protecting the judicial process.”
“It is imperative that a city attorney be free to carry out her duties without fear that faithfully doing so may ‘provoke a retaliatory response’ and somehow trigger personal liability,” Moreno said. He added that Méndez was “acting within her discretionary function.”
The lawsuit alleged that Carollo drew up a “hit list” of Fuller and Pinilla properties “for purposes of targeting those businesses for fines and shutting them down.” The plaintiffs later alleged that Méndez circulated the list and added one or two unrelated properties to it “solely so it would look like they were not only Fuller properties.”
But Moreno wrote in his order that Méndez did so in response to a resolution passed by the City Commission directing her to research certain properties that had potential code violations. In other words, she was “exercising her duties as City Attorney,” Moreno wrote.
Luis Suarez, an attorney for Méndez, said of Moreno’s ruling that: “We are very pleased.”
The parties agreed to voluntarily dismiss Carollo from the lawsuit last month, a move that was made official in an Aug. 11 order from Moreno. That leaves the city of Miami and Noriega, the city manager, as the two remaining defendants, according to Moreno’s latest order. Noriega has filed a motion to dismiss, which is still pending and awaiting a ruling, according to Mason Pertnoy, Noriega’s attorney.
“In light of the favorable rulings the Court has issued for Ms. Mendez and other individual defendants, Mr. Noriega hopes this trend continues,” Pertnoy said Wednesday.
Carollo said he wasn’t surprised by his dismissal from the lawsuit, calling it “frivolous.”
“This is all about money,” Carollo said. “It’s about them trying to take every penny that they can from the city. But in this case it’s not pennies.”
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