Coral Gables mayor’s defamation lawsuit against Spanish radio station can move forward
A judge has ruled that a defamation lawsuit filed by Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago — alleging that his reputation was damaged by on-air comments made about an ethics inquiry — can move forward.
On Friday, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Joseph Perkins denied a motion to dismiss from Actualidad Media Group, the LLC that puts out the Spanish-language radio show Actualidad 1040 AM.
Lago initially filed the lawsuit in December 2023. Last summer, Perkins dismissed Lago’s lawsuit, saying it was “legally insufficient.” The mayor then re-filed an amended lawsuit, on which Perkins ruled on Friday.
At this point in the legal process, Perkins wrote that the question was not “whether Plaintiff’s allegations are true or false. The question is whether Plaintiff’s allegations, if true, are legally sufficient to state a cause of action.” Focusing strictly on the contents of Lago’s amended complaint, Perkins said Lago’s allegations are “legally sufficient” to move forward to further proceedings.
Lago’s lawsuit alleges that Actualidad 1040 AM radio host Roberto Rodriguez Tejera and City Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, who was then a candidate, “falsely” claimed during an on-air segment in 2023 that Lago was the subject of a Miami-Dade Ethics Commission investigation involving a potential conflict of interest. At the time, Lago was under a “preliminary review,” which the agency does not consider to be an investigation.
The Ethics Commission closed out the matter later that year, writing that “the preliminary information gathered does not support further investigation.”
Perkins’ latest ruling lands one month before the Coral Gables election, where Lago is vying for his third term as mayor. During his tenure as an elected official, Lago has clashed with members of the media, fellow commissioners and critics, including Miami filmmaker and community activist Billy Corben, whom Lago publicly threatened with legal action at an October 2023 meeting. At that same meeting, the City Commission voted to censure Lago for comments he made to Spanish-language media about his colleagues.
In a statement, Lago’s attorney Mason Pertnoy said his client is a “strong believer in the First Amendment and the right to free speech, but that does not give people free license to make false and defamatory statements that baselessly attack his reputation and character.”
“Mayor Lago is very happy with the Court’s ruling and looks forward to litigating the merits of the lawsuit,” Pertnoy said. “... In reporting, words and accuracy matter. Mr. Lago remains confident that through this lawsuit the truth will come to light and Defendant Actualidad Media Group will be held accountable.”
Antonio Castro, an attorney for Actualidad, said Lago has “merely survived a second dismissal of his lawsuit” and that after Perkins’ dismissal last year, Lago has “finally made it to the starting line of the case.”
“The Court’s order simply allows the case to move forward at this preliminary stage and is not a ruling on the merits of the case,” Castro added, saying his client will “continue to vigorously defend against these claims and uphold the fundamental principles of the First Amendment.”
At the time of the radio segment, the Ethics Commission was probing whether Lago made a false statement when he voluntarily signed a sworn affidavit in 2022 proclaiming that neither he nor any of his immediate family members had a business interest in annexing Little Gables, an unincorporated enclave on the city’s northern border.
At the time, the mayor’s brother, Carlos Lago, was registered to lobby in the city of Miami for a company that owned a Little Gables trailer park that had been a sticking point in past efforts to annex the enclave. A representative from Carlos Lago’s law firm previously told the Herald that the mayor’s brother only represented the company for one project back in 2015 in Miami and that his registration became “effectively inoperative” thereafter. He withdrew his lobbyist registration for the company in early 2023, days after the Actualidad segment aired.
The Ethics Commission concluded in October 2023 that Lago “did not knowingly make a false statement” and that the preliminary fact-finding did not merit further scrutiny, effectively closing out the matter.
In his defamation complaint, the mayor claimed the comments on Actualidad caused a “deterioration of Lago’s personal and business reputation in the community, humiliation, embarrassment and ridicule.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 8:02 PM.
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