A judge has decided not to confiscate Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo’s Coconut Grove residence in order to pay the $63.5 million court order against him. Judge Rodney Smith declared in an order issued on Wednesday that the property is immune from seizure since it is a homestead.
Smith, who has been in charge of the Carollo case, announced that he is following the advice of U.S. Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis, who had supported Carollo in his battle to get the land recognized as his homestead back in July.
In June 2023, two businessmen filed a federal civil action against Carollo, alleging that he attempted to damage their companies as political vengeance. Carollo was found culpable.
Violating First Amendment rights
A lawsuit seeking the removal of Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo from office was dismissed by a judge. The plaintiffs received more than $63 million after the jury determined that Carollo had violated their First Amendment rights.
Carollo allegedly used the city’s police and code enforcement agencies as weapons to close down a number of his Little Havana businesses because they backed his political rival, according to Bill Fuller, owner of the Ball and Chain restaurant and club, and fellow businessman Martin Pinilla.
The owner of a Miami-Dade surgical recovery company is charged with sexually abusing two women. Louis stated in her filing that it was Fuller and Pinilla’s responsibility to demonstrate that the Morris Lane property was not exempt.
According to Carollo’s testimony, he transferred his driver’s license to the property in April 2023, and his voter ID card, which was issued a few months prior to the verdict, shows the address. Carollo claimed that although he had been residing in an apartment before the 2022 district map modification that included the Coconut Grove house in his district, he had always intended to make the house his permanent residence.
Pinilla didn’t show that Louis didn’t find Fuller. “The objective evidence is sufficient to show Defendant’s intent to permanently reside at the Morris Lane Property as his homestead,” Louis stated in the court filing.
“Thus, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs did not meet their burden to prove that Defendant left the Morris Lane Property with no intention of returning or that Defendant established a new permanent residence at another place.”
Carollo has challenged the $63.5 million decision and denied any misconduct. Carollo is contesting a federal court order that was issued in November 2023 directing the city of Miami to garnish the commissioner’s salary.