Attorneys Daren Stabinski and Todd Stabinski, of Stabinski Law, recently served as counsel for a money courier in a lawsuit against Brink's Inc. Their client, Mario Martinez, had been working as a money courier for Brink's when a bag containing $350,000 in cash went missing while in transit from one of the company's facilities to another. After conducting a two-day internal investigation, the West Palm Beach Police Department was contacted and Martinez was subsequently arrested for theft. After spending nearly six months in jail, Martinez was acquitted of the charges.
Shortly thereafter, Martinez decided to file a lawsuit against Brink's Inc. for malicious prosecution. He argued that Brink's had failed to provide complete and unbiased evidence against him. He believes that this was because a security director at the company wanted to establish that the theft occurred in West Palm Beach, rather than Miami – the reason being that loss rates were unacceptably high at his base. With the help of our firm, Martinez further argued that the security chief had steered police in one direction so that there was no probe into other Brink's employees or facilities.
Due to the hardship that the theft accusations had caused him, Martinez also sought damages for emotional distress and lost earnings. The defendants argued that they had acted in good faith when reporting the theft to police, and that the police's investigation was independent of their own. They further stated that the basis for this particular employee's arrest was the culmination of several hours of surveillance tapes that showed Martinez at the West Palm Beach facility. In the end, the court ruled that Brink's targeted Martinez "for reasons other than an effort to locate the true thief."
For this reason, our client was awarded $4,261,050 in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages. If you are interested in learning more about this case, click here.