MIAMI – An appeals court Wednesday said the City of Miami and Hearth Chief Joseph Zahralban are shielded from defamation allegations in a lawsuit stemming from a 2017 incident in which a Black firefighter’s family pics were defaced and a string formed like a noose was placed about just one of the photos.
Firefighters David Rivera, Kevin Meizoso, and Justin Rumbaugh submitted the lawsuit about responses that Zahralban produced in a news release and news conference that implicated them in putting the noose over the picture, according to Wednesday’s ruling by a panel of the 3rd District Court docket of Attractiveness.
The firefighters explained they were not involved in the noose incident and alleged in the lawsuit that Zahralban’s statements falsely portrayed them as “racists who ended up responsible for positioning the noose around the defaced photographs, creating them irreparable harm,” the ruling reported.
Following currently being terminated from their jobs, the firefighters went to arbitration and had been reinstated.
A Miami-Dade County circuit judge declined to dismiss the defamation allegations, but the appeals courtroom stated the metropolis and Zahralban had been entitled to authorized immunity.
“Chief Zahralban and the metropolis are absolutely immune from go well with for Main Zahralban’s created and oral statements relating to the city’s termination of the respondents (the firefighters) as the statements ended up built within just the scope of Main Zahralban’s obligations as the director of the city’s fire-rescue section,” stated the ruling, created by Decide Eric Hendon and joined by Judges Edwin Scales and Bronwyn Miller.
