Filmmaker sues Coral Gables and cinema over George Zimmerman ‘Trayvon Hoax’ documentary
Joel Gilbert, the director of “The Trayvon Hoax,” and his Boca Raton-based attorney Larry Klayman have sued Coral Gables Art Cinema and the city.
The suit says the cinema, at the urging of the Coral Gables mayor, had no right to cancel a rental of the theater for a private screening of Gilbert’s documentary on the George Zimmerman trial after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Gilbert and Klayman had advertised they were to hold a news conference at the theater before screening a Blu-ray copy of the film. Tickets were not sold to the public.
The suit was filed Tuesday evening in Miami-Dade Circuit Court by Gilbert’s Ventura, California-based Highway 61 Entertainment.
The lawsuit blames Coral Gables Art Cinema for a “breach of contract, as well as for tortious interference and other causes of action for illegal cancellation of a theater rental agreement that was signed and paid for in advance.”
In an email to the Miami Herald in December, Gilbert had said the suit would argue that this was “a breach of contract and First Amendment case.”
In an interview with the Herald then, Klayman said: “People like the mayor run away from the truth and what he did was totally illegal and he will get sued, notwithstanding the cinema. This is a private contract. This is part and parcel with why we have racial division in this country because people are afraid of these issues and, in this case, it’s even worse because they aren’t allowing people to speak to a lawsuit that a jury will discuss. This isn’t for the mayor to decide. His conduct is a disgrace.”
In the suit, the theater’s co-executive director Brenda Moe is accused of “falsely spin[ning] Cinema’s breach of contract and censorship of Gilbert’s film” in interviews with the Herald, Miami New Times, CBS4 and the Sun Sentinel.
On Wednesday, the Coral Gables Art Cinema said it had no comment on the suit.
The city of Coral Gables was also named in this suit.
Coral Gables’ Public Affairs Manager Maria Rosa Higgins Fallon said the city had not been presented with the suit by Wednesday afternoon and declined to comment.
Zimmerman is the neighborhood watch volunteer acquitted of homicide charges in the 2012 fatal shooting of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon in Sanford, Florida. The documentary argues that there was witness fraud at Zimmerman’s trial and that the trial helped divide the country along racial lines, Gilbert said.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 1:48 PM.
