A jury has ordered Miami-Dade County to pay $10 million to a former deputy chief medical examiner who was demoted, harassed and wrongly fired in August 2021 after blowing the whistle about misconduct and illegality.
It is one of the largest awards against the county in recent memory involving an agency that was once among the nation’s most respected for providing professional death investigations. The award was divided – $2.77 million for illegal retaliation that violated Florida’s Whistleblower’s Act and $7.230 million for wrongful termination.,
The trial, and the complaint that led to it, also has raised disturbing, yet unaddressed questions about how the ME’s office may have been used in an illegal scheme to harvest and sell human tissue and body parts.
The misconduct alleged by Dr. David F. Garavan during a four-day trial before Circuit Judge Barbara Areces that ended Friday wasn’t confined to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office. The jury also was told about “systemic” failures at the county’s Human Resources Department (HR), County Attorney’s Office and the office of then-mayor, now Republican congressman, Carlos Gimenez.
What the jury was told happened at HR is illustrative. Garavan’s 47-page complaint says HR conducted a “biased and unprofessional…witch hunt” against him based on complaints of sexual harassment by an antagonistic female doctor at the medical examiner’s office that were later determined to be unfounded.
Further, then-HR Director Arleene Cuellar...
Topline Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant who was accused earlier this year of making false statements about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, was indicted Tuesday on unrelate...