Ex-officers who owe $7M to Broward man exonerated by DNA sue their lawyers for negligence – Sun Sentinel
If the retired officers win a money judgment against the lawyers who represented them in the civil rights trial, they would use the cash to help pay what they owe to the exonerated man, Anthony Caravella, their current lawyer said.
The unusual negligence lawsuit was officially filed Tuesday against Miramar City Attorney Jamie Cole and his private law firm, Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, in Broward Circuit Court.
Retired officers George Pierson and William Mantesta are seeking about $8.5 million to cover what they owe, their lawyer Charles Whitehead told the Sun Sentinel. That includes the $7 million verdict against them personally, plus Caravella’s legal fees and costs, and mandated interest that continues to mount on the judgment.
Caravella, now 48, spent close to 26 years in prison before DNA testing exonerated him in the 1983 rape and murder of a Miramar woman. He was 15 when he was arrested. At age 41 in 2009, he was released from prison.
n 2013, jurors in a federal civil rights trial in Fort Lauderdale found that Mantesta and Pierson framed Caravella for the crime. The jury ordered Mantesta to pay $4 million and ordered Pierson to pay $3 million in compensation and punitive damages to Caravella.
The eight-member jury unanimously found that Mantesta and Pierson acted with malice or reckless indifference to Caravella, who had an IQ of 67, violated his constitutional rights against being maliciously prosecuted, coerced him into confessing and withheld evidence that could have cleared him soon after his arrest. A federal appeals court upheld the verdicts against the former officers in January 2015.
The man believed to have actually committed the rape and murder, Anthony Martinez, died of a heart attack in 2010 while under investigation. The officers had questioned him in 1983 but dropped him as a suspect and pursued Caravella, records show.
The verdict against Mantesta, 67, of Chipley, in Florida’s Panhandle, and Pierson, 67, of Inverness, near Ocala, was unusual because jurors found them personally liable and the city of Miramar and its insurer refused to pay the $7 million on their behalf.
That issue appears to form the crux of the retired officers’ lawsuit against the private law firm, which provides city attorney services to Miramar. Cole was the lead attorney representing Miramar, Mantesta, Pierson and a third former officer, Bill Guess, who was found not liable, in the lawsuit.
“Prior to the return of the jury verdict and, in fact, to the present day, Weiss Serota did not accurately disclose a conflict of interest that was present between the City of Miramar, and the City Attorney Jamie Cole, and Mr. Cole’s representation of the city and Mr. Mantesta and Mr. Pierson in the federal lawsuit,” Morehead wrote in the negligence lawsuit.
The law firm wrote letters to Mantesta and Pierson in 2011 informing them that, if a conflict arose, Cole would represent the city’s interest and not the interests of Pierson or Mantesta.
But “there was never any attempt by Mr. Cole or Weiss Serota to inform Mr. Pierson and Mr. Mantesta that an obvious conflict of interest was present from day one and that they needed separate counsel,” Morehead wrote.
When Cole spoke to Miramar city commissioners during several executive sessions, which were closed to the public, he “took positions directly adverse to his clients, Pierson and Mantesta, but never disclosed the same to them,” according to the lawsuit.
The former officers only found out about the advice Cole gave to his other client – the city of Miramar – when transcripts of the executive sessions were made public after the litigation was over.
During a closed executive session in January 2013, a transcript shows Cole told commissioners: “Now if the jury found against the officers, but not the city, we don’t have to pay the judgment against the officers. So, you know, the three officers would actually be on the hook for all that money. Now, it is possible that we – at that point – we might settle and have the city pay for it.”
In other private sessions, Cole told commissioners the city “might not pay” for a judgment against the officers and “we are not committing to paying judgments against them individually.”
Cole said he had no comment on the lawsuit.
Joseph Serota, the law firm’s founding partner, said Cole and the law firm acted appropriately and they are very disappointed the ex-officers filed suit against them.
“We worked very hard for these two officers. We felt these two officers had acted appropriately,” Serota said. “There was no conflict because the officers consistently told us they did nothing wrong … We believed them and we believe them. What we did was standard procedure and we acted appropriately.”
The officers’ lawsuit alleges that Cole and his law firm were negligent and breached their responsibility to them by “in effect, telling the jury to make any award against them [the officers] personally and not against the City of Miramar.”
Cole and the law firm were also negligent “in arguing to the jury in this case throughout the trial that Pierson and Mantesta were on their own for any intentional allegations and the city had nothing to do with it,” according to the lawsuit.
Cole and the law firm also failed “to disclose to Pierson and Mantesta that they were giving their other client, the City of Miramar, advice not to indemnify them and to allow them to take the verdict against them and protect the city coffers.”
Transcripts of the non-public executive sessions show Cole advised city commissioners a number of times that they were not required to cover a money judgment against the former officers.
The officers’ lawsuit states that if their lawyers had not been negligent “the jury’s verdicts would not have gone against officers Pierson and Mantesta, and they would have been exonerated at trial.”
Serota said that Cole and the law firm maintains they accurately explained the law to the commission and they believe the officers were legally obligated to pay any judgment against them that was based on the officers’ acting in bad faith or maliciously.
“We worked our butts off for these guys and they knew we represented the city [too],” Serota said. ” I don’t see the relationship between their claim of a conflict and the verdict.”
Though Caravella has not yet received a cent from the former officers, Morehead told the Sun Sentinel the judgment against the officers still has a “devastating effect” on them.
He said all of their assets are at risk, a percentage of any wages they earn can be garnished, and their credit is “devastated,” which affects everything from their ability to borrow money to the price they pay for car and homeowner insurance.
It could affect ownership of their assets and their estates after death, he said. The officers’ pensions cannot be seized, he said.
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Republished by the Law Office of Scott A. Ferris, P.A.
Source: www.sun-sentinel.com