Serianni v City of Venice -- Day 1

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The opening day, August 6, of the trial of Venice Police Office Demetri Serianni v The City of Venice was for the most part a yawner. At stake is an award to Serianni of anywhere  from $100 k in attorney's fees to a couple of million on pain and suffering punitive damages, so this is not a minor deal. This case is to the current administration what the Sunshine Law lawsuit was to the Ed Martin administration and here, again, the city's legal strategy has bungled what should have been a small case that should have been settled out of court a year ago into a monstrous financial black hole with bottom discernible.

Having followed this case closely from the start, I am pretty comfortable stating that the city will lose this case on a big scale. How big will be up to the jury, five women and three men from all over central Florida.

The first half of the first day was spent on jury selection. Two women from Venice were in the selection pool. The first was a retired university professor from Iowa who now lives on the island of Venice. She stated she had attended functions where former Mayor Ed Martin and former city councilwoman Sue Lang had spoken (both Lang and Martin were on the original witness list, Lang was dropped after telling attorneys that she remembered little and that she has a phobia about traveling on the interstate highways).

This potential juror's comment during voir dire questioning that "the politics in Venice are crazy" earned her a peremptory strike from the city's legal team, this despite Judge Virginia Hernandez-Covington's statement to the city's legal team that she found the statement vague and not meaningful: "People sometimes say things without really thinking about what they are saying."

The other, an RN who works at Venice Regional Hospital, stated she was a social acquaintance of current councilwoman Jeanette Gates (also on the current witness list). Under questioning from the judge, the potential juror stated she and Gates ran "...in the same social circles," but that she did not know Gates all that well. She stated she had heard a bit about this current lawsuit, but not enough to form an opinion. She was eventually selected for the jury.

The opening comments of Thomas Sadaka, Serianni's attorney, was a barrage of accusations made at current and former Venice officials. Sadaka painted Serianni as a brave but beleaguered police officer who consistently has tried to behave in an honest and honorable manner only to have the weight of an entire police department, along with city hall, dumped from a high place on to him.

Sadaka told the tale of police Lieutenant Mike Rose, who the jury would hear testimony to the effect that Rose spent his days sitting in his office watching fishing on TV, reading fishing magazines, and making lures, coming out of his office only when he was needed to work, on city time, at the Mahi Mac bait shop that he owns. The jury would further hear testimony that Rose abused his chain-of-command line authority over Serianni to make the patrolman's life miserable after Serianni had informed the city's Director of Administrative Services, Alan Bullock, of Rose's extra-curricular activities. He went further and stated that Bullock had rejected the allegations made by Serianni and instead, Rose was informed of Serianni's statements.

Sadaka told the tale of Officer Mike Frassetti, fired in 2008 after being falsely accused of destroying police records. An arbitrator later found the accusation ludicrous and ordered the city to rehire Frassetti and reimburse him for all lost back-pay and insurance benefits. Sadaka recounted how three officers, Serianni, Betty Camp, and Pete Sorrentino, had testified on behalf of Frassetti at an FDLE law enforcement certification revocation hearing brought on at former Police Chief Julie Williams' behest (the FDLE basically laughed at Williams at the time and refused to revoke Frassetti's certification). Later, the three would testify at Frassetti's arbitration hearing.

Sadaka told the jury that all three officers had, simultaneously and immediately after testifying in the two hearings, been singled out by Williams for retaliatory discipline.

But there was more, a lot more. The jury would hear of strange procedures in promotion of officers designed to benefit Williams' supporters. Here, Sadaka was referring to Lt. Eric Hill, whose meteoric rise from dispatcher to Lieutenant barely covered eight years, earned the rank of Lieutenant after twice flunking the lieutenant's exam and, at William's discretion, passing a firefighter's exam instead to earn the rank.

The jury would hear of the investigative white board in the squad room, where Williams had plastered documents smearing Serianni in the hope of humiliating him into quitting.

Sadaka told the jury that they would hear testimony that then-Officer David Miller (now a deputy with the Sarasota Sheriff's Office) was instructed by supervisors to make a false complaint against Serianni, and that Miller subsequently did so.

And on and on. A week's suspension without pay, that punishment later reversed when attorney Andrea Mogensen showed up at the disciplinary hearing (held AFTER the suspension had been completed) and everyone else, Williams and City Attorney Bob Anderson included, fled the room upon seeing Mogensen.

In sharp contrast was the city's opening arguments, voiced by attorney Mark Levitt, who was hired by the city's insurance underwriter.

It should be noted here that City Attorney Bob Anderson is not allowed in the courtroom as he has been subpoenaed as a material witness by Serianni's attorneys. Instead, Police Chief Tom McNulty is sitting at the defense table as the city's representative.

Levitt's opening argument to the jury started with a cheesy analogy of a jigsaw puzzle and how the jury needed to wait until every piece was in place before making any decisions. That took an incredibly boring five minutes alone as he described the nature of the shape of a puzzle piece and how you should always start with the four corners.

After that, though, Levitt turned on the heat, telling jurors that Williams may not have been a beloved chief, but that she was a tough, no-nonsense chief who was brought in to clean up the department. Levitt stated that Williams did a lot of IAs (internal affairs investigations) on a lot of officers, not just on Serianni.

Levitt's main argument could be titled "What's the big deal?" He argued that Serianni had undergone three disciplinary actions under Williams (Serianni's attorneys are stating that there were 17 separate acts of retaliation), and that all three had been rescinded, so Serianni should be grateful that the system worked.

Moreover, Levitt argued, the records indicating all of this badness could be removed from Serianni's employee jacket after a year had elapsed, so Serianni was already in the clear. Which is entirely untrue. What Levitt is suggesting is a clear violation of Florida's public records laws. All of this paperwork, ALL OF IT, will remain in Serianni's jacket long after all of the actors involved in this fiasco are dead.

As to Lt. Rose, Levitt argued that everyone knew Rose would occasionally visit his bait shop just to quickly check on things and that he had a supervisor's approval and that the practice had stopped long before Serianni tattled on him (something that Serianni's attorneys will, no doubt, heavily dispute).

Levitt's attack on Serianni's case was an effective speech that appeared to do exactly what it was intended to -- put a whole lot of doubt into the heads of the eight-member jury.

That wrapped up the morning.

After lunch three witnesses were called and Sadaka's motion for sanctions due to spoliation (i.e., former City Manager Isaac Turner's destruction of evidence stemming from the shredding of his own notes in his investigation of Chief Williams).

The spoliation motion was denied by Judge Hernandez-Covington as being "too little, too late." The motion had been filed only a week before the trial had started. Likewise, Sadaka's first witness, former police Deputy Chief Dan McGoogan, was tossed after Levitt objected that McGoogan's name first appeared on the witness list on the previous Friday and, moreover, all McGoogan was probably going to testify to was that Williams was a bad actor (a phrase he would repeatedly use to describe Williams but only out of the jury's presence) and that McGoogan had bad experiences with the former chief.

Sadaka argued that McGoogan's only testimony was to establish a pre-Williams baseline of Serianni's performance to the effect that Serianni had consistently been documented as an excellent officer in all areas right up until he crossed Williams and Rose.

Hernandez-Covington was not swayed and McGoogan, no longer a witness, was now free to sit in the back of the court and watch the rest of the proceedings (witnesses are only allowed in the courtroom during their own testimony).

So, first at-bat went to Alan Bullock, the city's HR director (actual title is Director of Administrative Services). Bullock's rather lengthy amount of time on the stand boiled down to two basic questions: Did Serianni tell Bullock about Lt. Rose using city time and resources for his own commercial gain and what did Bullock do about it.

Through over an hour of testimony, the answers predictably turned out to be yes and not much, although it was about a month and a half's worth of not much by Bullock as he passed the buck to Turner, Williams, and, incredibly, Rose himself. The end result was Rose lost a few hours of vacation time while Serianni received a career threatening job appraisal from Rose in which Rose flunked Serianni in every aspect of his work, this after seven years of consistently receiving the "excellent" grade in almost all categories.

This, in turn, led to a series of disciplines and actions in a domino effect, all of which Bullock turned a blind eye to.

Levitt's cross-examination further pinned Bullock in the thick of it, thus setting Bullock up after the trial should Serianni's attorney prevail in the verdict. Sadaka painted Bullock out to be the good little soldier obeying illegal orders, while Levitt's cross set Bullock up, as the last man standing, to potentially take the fall.

The last witness was current Councilman Emilio Carlessimo. His testimony was short and sweet. Serianni and Officer Pete Sorrentino had come to him complaining that Williams was on the warpath and out of control and that Rose was continuing to desert his job by working on city time at the Mahi Mac's Bait Shop in Nokomis. Carlessimo went to Turner and demanded that Turner look into the matter, which in turn is what started the process that led to Williams' forced resignation some months later. As to Turner's notes, Carlessimo stated he knew nothing about the shredding until he read it in the Herald-Tribune, which is not exactly true as Carlessimo was at a council meeting prior to the destruction of those notes where the upcoming destruction was discussed by Turner and Mayor John Holic.

On the witness list today:
Officer Betty Camp
Sergeant Eugene Frangione
Detective Matt Mattmueller
Officer Robert Palmieri
Councilman Kit McKeon
Mayor John Holic
attorney Andrea Mogensen