Judge Rules Against Residents In Miami Grand Prix Court Battle

Miami FL

21 April, 2022

3:25 PM

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By Bianca Marcof, Miami Times Staff Writer, the Miami Times The Miami Grand Prix is set to go on next month, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Fine decided Wednesday afternoon. But due to the city's 10-year contract to hold the sport, residents will be able to re-make their case in an upcoming hearing within five months, prior to the following 2023 race. It was a decision anxiously awaited on by local homeowners, Former Miami-Dade County Commissioners Betty Ferguson and Barbara Jordan among them in attendance, who filed a suit seeking a preliminary injunction to keep the city from proceeding with the race due to concern over noise levels. Fine ruled that he would not schedule a preliminary injunction hearing prior to the start of the three-day race, May 6. He found that potential harm in terms of permanent hearing loss is avoided despite the burden being unfair to the residents, and that the evidence given was "very highly speculative." "I agree that your clients are blameless," Fine told Sam Dubbin, the attorney representing residents. "And that there's an inherent appeal to a fairness argument that it's just not fair to ask the people who are innocent and blameless to alter their routine to have their lives interfered with by taking precautions, any myriad number of precautions, to mitigate or eliminate the harm." The judge also was not persuaded in the reason for the delay in bringing this last-ditch case on March 21, approximately six weeks before the race, nor did he feel the evidence presented in the case concerning noise levels was anything other than predictive. "I don't know that anyone has done any testing," he said. "Even if it were possible to know today, the actual noise created by a current Formula One car within a few feet, there is no evidence of what that noise would be at any one location in the city." Earlier in the week, Melissa Pallett-Vasquez, the lawyer for Hard Rock Stadium, said that canceling the event would potentially cost them $300 million. The event will move forward. For more details about the lawsuit and what led to this ruling, read this week's front page story: https://www.miamitimesonline.com/news/local/miami-gardens-residents-try-stopping-miami-grand-prix/article_0ffb4dde-c029-11ec-8faf-47d521bfe88c.html?block_id=501774#tncms-source=spotlight The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.