Ramirez’s attorneys point to First Amendment rights
A Bradenton law firm that represents Siesta Key business and property owner Michael Holderness has threatened legal action against another Siesta resident, Lourdes Ramirez, if she persists in making public remarks about the value of vacant beach lots that Holderness is seeking to transfer to Sarasota County, The Sarasota News Leader has learned.
In the April newsletter to members of the nonprofit organization Protect Siesta Key, which she serves as president, Ramirez wrote that when she recently was “wrapping up a taped interview with Bay News 9,” she was approached by Holderness. He apparently had heard her discussing the Nov. 5, 2025 vote of the County Commission calling for the transfer the county’s 162 Beach Road parcel to Holderness as part of the settlement of a federal lawsuit he filed against the county in 2024. (See the related article in this issue.)
In return for that property, the settlement called for Holderness to turn over to the county four vacant beach lots seaward of North Beach Road on Siesta Key.
Ramirez publicly has expressed to the commissioners her opposition to the conveyance of the 162 Beach Road land to Holderness. She has stressed that the county bought that property in 2017 for $1.4 million out of the funds set aside for the county’s Neighborhood Parkland Acquisition Program, which dates to 2005. (See the related article on that program and a related land acquisition program.)
Ramirez also has emphasized publicly that the lots Holderness is to transfer to the county were valued at approximately $84,000, as shown on the website of Sarasota County Property Appraiser Bill Furst.
Most recently, Ramirez stressed the contrasting values of those Holderness lots and the 162 Beach Road parcel when she provided comments during the County Commission’s April 7 public hearing regarding county plans for a November General Election referendum on extending the county’s Land Acquisition and Management Program through 2049. The program, which includes the Neighborhood Parkland Acquisition Program, is scheduled to end in 2029. It assesses county property owners 0.25 mills per year. A mill represents $1,000 of the value of a parcel.
After Holderness came up to her on the beach at the end of the TV news interview, Ramirez continued in the April Protect Siesta Key newsletter, she tried to leave. However she continued, he began telling her that he disagreed with her position “and [her] valuation of the parcels and warned [her] about possible legal action, claiming ‘tortious interference.’ ”
Later, she wrote, her attorneys did in fact receive a warning letter from Holderness’ attorney, former Florida Senate President Bill Galvano, of the Grimes Galvano firm in Bradenton.
In response to a public records request, the Office of the County Attorney — which had been sent a copy of the letter — provided it to the News Leader.
The March 25 letter from Galvano — addressed to Ramirez’s Pompano Beach attorneys, Jodan K. Snyder and Hartsell Ozery — said that it “serves to place you and your client, Lourdes Ramirez/Protect Siesta Key, Inc., on notice that statements being made concerning the value of our client’s properties are incorrect and unsupported. Siesta Beach Lots has valid appraisals from qualified appraisers regarding the value of the subject properties.”
Galvano had attached a summary of those appraisals, he added.
“While your client may advocate to a governmental body,” Galvano continued, “she legally cannot knowingly misrepresent. Furthermore, making misrepresentations in order to interfere with a valid contractual agreement, such as exists between Sarasota County and Siesta Beach Lots is actionable.”
By “actionable,” he meant that the action could lead to litigation.
“Accordingly,” Galvano wrote, “please consider this correspondence formal notice that any further misrepresentations by your client, or by anyone acting at her direction or in concert with her, regarding Siesta Beach Lots’ properties must cease.”
Galvano then pointed out, “If unsupported statements continue to be made, repeated, published, or used to interfere with Siesta Beach Lots’ contractual rights, business interests, approvals, or dealings we will pursue all available remedies, including but not limited to claims for tortious interference.”
The Legal Information Institute of the Cornell Law School explains, “Tortious interference is a common law tort allowing a claim for damages against a defendant who wrongfully and intentionally interferes with the plaintiff’s contractual or business relationships.”
A tort, the Institute further explains, “is an act or omission that gives rise to injury or harm to another and amounts to a civil wrong for which courts impose liability.”
Ramirez’s attorney stresses the constitutionally protected right of free speech
In an April 3 letter, responding to Galvano’s threat, Shai Ozery, of the Hartsell Ozery firm in Pompano Beach, pointed out to Galvano, “[Y]our correspondence fails to identify any specific statements alleged to be false or misleading. As a threshold matter, all information published by our Client is derived from publicly available sources, including materials obtained through public records requests, and was disseminated truthfully and in good faith. To the extent your correspondence is intended as a ‘formal notice,’ it must, at a minimum, identify with particularity the statements at issue so that they can be meaningfully evaluated. Further, your insinuation that any statements made by our Client were knowing misrepresentations is unfounded, as you well know. If you have any basis to support such allegations, we encourage you to forward them for our review immediately.
“With respect to our client’s constitutionally protected speech on matters of public concern,” Ozery pointed out, “as you well know, ‘statements of opinion relating to matters of public concern’ are entitled to ‘full constitutional protection’ unless they allege a ‘provably false’ and ‘objectively verifiable’ fact, and published with actual malice. Ozery was citing the landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan.
As the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School explains, “The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice William Brennan, reviewed the [facts of the case] ‘against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.’ ”
Ozery continued in his letter to Galvano, “Our First Amendment allows speakers to be held liable for a tort caused by their speech only if that speech or petition was materially false and was made with actual or express malice.” He cited two other judicial precedents in making that statement.
Further, Ozery told Galvano, “Please also be advised that Florida law has expressly prohibited the filing of strategic lawsuits against public participation (‘SLAPP suits’) against individuals or entities for exercising their constitutional rights of free speech in connection with a public issue, as our Client has here …”
“While your client is free to disagree with our Client’s statements, made on a matter of public concern,” Ozery continued, “[Siesta Beach Lots] cannot bring meritless litigation primarily in response to our Client’s exercise of her constitutional rights, which is sanctionable conduct under Florida law.” Ozery cited Florida Statute 768.295.
“[S]hould [Siesta Beach Lots] maintain its position,” Ozery added, “please identify any such specific statements that you purport incorrectly represent the value of Siesta Beach Lots, LLC’s properties, so that we may review any such statements immediately. Once such statements are identified, and to the extent that you contend the properties’ values are different from the values within identified statements, please provide appraisals to substantiate your claims.”
The value of the property
When Galvano sent Deputy County Attorney David M. Pearce the copy of his warning letter to Ramirez, Galvano, provided with it a table showing the values of the four parcels slated for transfer to the county, as part of the settlement of Holderness’ federal lawsuit:
On April 14, the News Leader checked the website of Sarasota County Property Appraiser Bill Furst to review the values of the parcels owned by Holderness, as cited in the proposed, legal settlement, for which Ramirez has been citing Furst’s figures in her public statements. None of the “Parcel 2” land noted in Galvano’s attachment is mentioned in the proposed settlement.
The values for the specific property identification numbers, as noted, are as follows:
- 0080230013 — The 2025 “just,” or market, value was $21,200; in 2024, it was $20,600. That lot has a total of 10,065 square feet. It is classified as a vacant residential site.
- 0080230015 — The 2025 just value was $21,700; in 2024, it was $21,000. That parcel comprises 9,544 square feet. Its identified property use is “Sand dunes.”
- 0080230017 — The 2025 just value was $21,300; in 2024, it was $20,600. That parcel contains 10,248 square feet; its property use is identified as a vacant residential site.
- 0080230018 — The 2025 just value was $21,600; in 2024, it was $20,900. That parcel comprises 10,065 square feet, the webpage says. The property use classification is “Sand dunes.”
Adding up the 2025 values of the four lots, the News Leader arrived at the figure of $85,800. In 2024, the total was $83,100.