Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who is expected to win her re-election bid without much trouble, is thought of as the soft-spoken, bespectacled progressive who starts many of her sentences with an apology and stays away from negative politics.
But to Ran Gimeno and his family, she is “a monster.”
Gimeno and his husband, Justin Polga, have been embroiled in a legal business battle with the commissioner’s husband for almost two years and say the Cavas have maligned and harassed them — so far as to stalk their then 8-year-old son.
“It’s psychological warfare,” Gimeno told Ladra. “They have made our lives miserable.”
He said that at one point, Dr. Robert Cava and an employee went to their son’s Spanish school on Kendall Drive to 
take photographs and were actually chased out into the parking lot when the administrator started asking them questions. “How the hell did they even know where my son’s Spanish school is?”
Polga took Cava to court to get out of the non-compete … and voila, he won his case. Or partially, anyway. Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Bronwyn Miller would not throw it out completely, but he agreed that the restrictions went too far.
“The scope and breadth of the restrictive covenant, as it fails to limit its application to identifiable patients, create an unnecessary restraint on trade, thus, under Florida law, must be more narrowly construed, rather than invalidated,” Miller wrote in his July 2017 ruling.
Dr. Cava wanted Polga to be unable to do business within a five mile radius for two years. But that included assisting patients who were to be admitted to area hospitals within that distance, like Baptist and South Miami — which are where Polga is accredited — or teaching or advertising. The judge said he definitely could assist his patients with admittance to those hospitals and assist patients at those hospitals who are not current or former patients of Cava’s.
Polga could also teach anyone except current or former patients of Cava’s. And the judge only found that the non-compete on advertising applied specifically to targeting an audience within a five mile radius. But an ad in the Herald or on the internet would be okay, Miller said.
However, the case really got ugly outside of court, Gimeno said. And he has the police reports from four different municipalities to prove it.
According to one police report from Coral Gables, Gimeno went to the station about 5 p.m. Feb. 21 to report “he felt he was being stalked.
“A man by the name of Mr. Robert Cava and his wife Mrs. Daniella Cava had been following him, his husband Justin 
Polga and their son Jacob Polga,” reads the report. “He, his husband and his son have seen Mr. and Mrs. Cava on several occasions at different locations, such as the Gulliver Academy that his son attends, which is located at 12595 SW 57th Avenue, as well as the St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School, located at 5692 North Kendall Dr.”
The report also says that Polga had seen the Cavas at Doctor’s Hospital, where he works, and that both Dr. Cava and the commissioner ride their bikes down the street they live on in Pinecrest.
“Mr. Gimeno says he feels as if it is no coincidence that he, his husband and his son continually see Mr. and Mrs. Cava at their son’s school and at their jobs,” reads the police report. “Mr. Gimeno expressed concern for his safety as well as the safety of his family.”
This report was filed after they got a call from Gulliver stating that Jacob “had been behaving differently because, as he reported to a counselor, ‘a bad man is following me.'” The boy was taken out of school that day.
Gimeno said that they were also harassed by Commissioner Levine Cava at the annual St. Thomas Episcopal Alumni 5K Run, where they had sponsored a table benefiting Breakthrough Miami. He said the commissioner “approached us as we were speaking among a group of fellow attendees/sponsors, including heat of schools for Gulliver Schools. She attempted to intimidate us in public.”
This was a month after a 400-guest function at the new University of Miami Lennar Foundation Medical Center, where Dr. Cava “approached us as we were speaking among a small group of fellow attendees. He forced himself into our personal space and attempted to intimidate us in public. We did not engage with him.”
Furthermore, Gimeno said that Commissioner Cava is using her influence to try to get their attorney, who teaches art time at the University of Miami, fired from her UM gig.
Gimeno — who told Ladra that Commissioner Levine Cava also approached and berated him and his son at an Apple store — said he and Polga did file a compaint with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which dismissed it. And Chris Brown, an attorney for Dr. Cava, says that the commissioner has nothing to do with the lawsuit and that Polga and Gimeno simply do not have a case for harassment.
“If they did not want to be unnerved by a county commissioner, they probably should not have made her a witness in his case against her husband,” Brown said.
Really? That invites harassment?
Reached over the weekend, the commissioner said she had nothing to do with the legal battle. “I’m doing everything in my power to stay out of his business,” Levine Cava told Ladra. “I’m not involved in the lawsuit.”
She said that she has had “no contact” with Polga and Gimeno or their son. “Twice I have laid eyes on this man,” she said. Once was when she gave a proclamation to a medical group and another time was when she was at the Apple store and Gimeno came in, she said. “And he came up to me! I avoided him. I left right away.”
Levine Cava also said that no police officer from any agency has ever interviewed her. “Anyone can call the police and file a report,” Levine Cava said. “This has nothing to do with me. This is really a person who is desperate for attention.”
Desperate for attention? What attention have they gotten, besides, well, mine now? And why?
“Of course, I’m sure Gulliver wanted the attention. My son had to go to a psychologist for the attention,” Gimeno said.
Levine Cava insists that neither she nor her husband have been to Gimeno’s son’s schools.
A bunch of people, including someone from the Step by Step Spanish school and someone from St. Thomas Episcopal Church, have been subpoenaed for a motion of contempt that Cava has filed against Polga for apparently advertising within the five-mile radius he was supposed to stay out of.
As part of the discovery, there is a photograph taken of Dr. Polga’s pamphlets on a stand on a table. Inside the school’s front office.
Old story about Daniella Levine Cava paints ugly picture of harassment added by Ladra on
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