By Steve Plunkett
An expert witness in Richard Lucibella’s police brutality lawsuit says the onetime vice mayor of Ocean Ridge lost more than $9.4 million just in past and future earnings as a result of his arrest by Officers Richard Ermeri and Nubia Savino in 2016.
Lucibella’s complaint also asks for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for physical and mental suffering as well as his attorney fees and costs.
Economist and expert witness Hank Fishkind said Lucibella “was suspended from managing his health care practices. In addition, he could not effectively manage his other health care-related businesses while defending himself against the defendants’ wrongful acts.”
As a result, Fishkind said, “there was a sharp erosion of the profitability” from two of Lucibella’s businesses, Primus, a management services organization, and Accountable Care Options LLC, a managed care organization.
But Frank Mari, the attorney for Ermeri and Savino, argues that Fishkind is not qualified to make such statements.
“Fishkind has never specialized in health care economics, has never published on health care economics, and has never lectured on health care economics,” Mari wrote in a motion asking the U.S. District Court to exclude his opinions and testimony from Lucibella’s trial.
Mari also faults Fishkind’s analysis for its reliance on what Lucibella told him before he prepared his report.
“In short, Fishkind’s opinions are speculative and merely parrot Plaintiff’s unsubstantiated, unverified allegations regarding Plaintiff’s claimed damages,” Mari wrote.
Similarly, Lucibella attorney James Green is seeking to bar the testimony of police expert witness John Peters supporting the defense. Peters, Green wrote in his motion to exclude, “admitted that there wasn’t anything in the training records that he reviewed that indicated Ermeri had received training specific to leg sweeps. … Nor was there anything in (Savino’s) training records that Peters reviewed that indicated (Savino) had received training specific to knee drops.”
Both tactics were used during Lucibella’s arrest.
And in a brief filed Jan. 31, Green argued that Fishkind, a former associate director at the University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research, is indeed qualified to be an expert in the case.
“Dr. Fishkind reviewed thousands of pages of financial and other records in this case … and dozens of articles on the business of healthcare and specifically, Accountable Care Organizations,” Green wrote.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon has not ruled on Green’s or Mari’s challenges. She has rescheduled the trial for April 11 at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce.
Lucibella’s federal lawsuit alleges battery by Ermeri and Savino, that they used excessive force and that they conducted an unreasonable search. The officers dispute all three counts, and Police Chief Richard Jones has said the arrest was proper after he concluded his internal investigation.
Cannon on Nov. 23 dismissed all of Lucibella’s claims against the town of Ocean Ridge. The town’s attorneys are seeking $134,573 from him for their fees and costs.
Savino, meanwhile, claims Lucibella battered her during his arrest and has a civil lawsuit pending in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. That case is scheduled for a jury trial in May.
Lucibella’s lawsuit centers on his Oct. 22, 2016, arrest. Savino, Ermeri and Sgt. William Hallahan, who has since retired, went to Lucibella’s home that night after neighbors reported hearing shots fired. They confiscated a .40-caliber handgun and found five spent shell casings on the patio.
At one point Lucibella forcefully poked Ermeri’s chest with his finger. During the arrest, he was taken to the ground, pinned to the patio pavers and suffered injuries to his face and ribs.
On Feb. 1, 2019, a Circuit Court jury found Lucibella not guilty of felony battery on a police officer and resisting the officer with violence but guilty of misdemeanor simple battery, a lesser included offense.
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