Lawsuit indicates a cover up attempt at City Hall
The city of Miami code compliance supervisor who was confronted and allegedly poked and pushed by Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla at an illegal nightclub in February has sued the lawmaker for libel and is seeking more than $100,000 in damages.
In the complaint, the attorneys for Suzann Nicholson cite two news stories in which Diaz de la Portilla said that the employee was lying and making up the incident to file a fraudulent workman’s compensation claim.
More interestingly, the lawsuit also claims her supervisor, then Code Compliance Assistant Director Eric Nemons, tried to cover up the incident and ordered Nicholson to destroy any evidence of the commissioner’s involvement.
Read related: Alex Diaz de la Portilla got caught at an illegal bar, confronted code officer
“After Nemons spoke to his own supervisor, and after plaintiff informed him that defendant was drinking and smoking at the venue, Nemons suggested plaintiff leave the venue and, more shockingly, that Plaintiff destroy all photographic evidence Plaintiff had collected because ‘we’re supposed to keep our politicians safe,'” the complaint states.
Nemons has since been promoted to acting director of the department. ¡Pero por supuesto! That’s what you get when you try to “keep our politicians safe.” You get job security!
Meanwhile, Nicholson hasn’t exactly returned to a welcoming workplace. She was reprimanded for taking overtime that had already been approved and could not get a meeting with the assistant city manager about the confrontation with the commissioner. She was originally given the wrong forms for her workman’s comp claim. You know, the one that ADLP says is bogus. And her attorneys say her work history is being investigated by the city with the goal of finding something to fire her on.
Instead of having an independent investigation into the actual incident, they are investigating her?
All this is obvious political retaliation because she wouldn’t back down from a city commissioner who wanted to keep smoking and drinking with scantily clad women at an illegal nightclub’s VIP section. A commissioner who allegedly pushed her and said something along the lines of “your kind is not wanted here.”
Did he mean code compliance officers? Or is he talking about blacks?
The incident occurred on Feb. 20 and into the wee hours of Feb. 21, when Nicholson — as part of a routine COVID compliance surprise inspection — arrived with police at an illegal nightclub at 772 NW 22nd Street in Allapattah. Not just in ADLP’s district but eight blocks from his parents’ mattress factory. When she asked for someone in charge, a bouncer brought her the commissioner.
Police body cam footage show the two interacting several times with Diaz de la Portilla taking a bossy tone — just how involved is he in the illegal nightclub business? — and telling her at one point that he will call the city manager and she should just leave.
Read related: Body cam video shoes ADLP at illegal club, tells code inspector to ‘Walk away’
The police body cam footage does not show Diaz de la Portilla pushing or poking Nicholson — who has said she injured herself when she lost her footing trying to avoid him touching her again — but we haven’t seen the video from all four officers who were there.
Still, it wouldn’t mean anything if it wasn’t captured. The cameras are not on her all the time. And Ladra believes the grandma with the real public servant job and not the career politician who had his lackey hired as a ghost employee at the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency and who can’t keep track of all the COVID relief grocery gift cards his office got.
Nicholson’s attorneys, Matt Baldwin and David Winker, say that Diaz de la Portilla lied when he told The Miami Herald and provided a statement to NBC 6 that the city employee had faked the injury to file a fraudulent workman’s comp claim. This is a serious accusation of a criminal felony. And, the attorneys say, he made it knowing it wasn’t true.
“At the time the defendant published this statement to a third party, he knew that they were not true, because of his own conduct toward plaintiff on the night in question,” the lawsuit reads. “At the time the Defendant published this statement, he made it fraudulently and in bad faith, with the intent to silence or intimidate plaintiff from cooperating with law enforcement or pursuing other legal remedies.”
She is, by the way, cooperating with investigators from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where Ladra was told Nicholson had a second visit this week.
“At a minimum, defendant’s statements that plaintiff was ‘fabricating a story to claim workers[’] compensation’ was made with reckless disregard and with malice,” the lawsuit states.
Ya think? ADLP calls it misdirection.
Nicholsons attorneys also say that code compliance supervisor took and passed not one but two polygraph examinations. She and her attorneys will have a press conference on Thursday about the lawsuit.
Commissioner Diaz de la Portilla declined to comment.
Code compliance officers sues Miami Commissioner r Alex Diaz de la Portilla by Political Cortadito on Scribd
Miami code officer sues Alex Diaz de la Portilla after illegal nightclub raid added by Ladra on
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