A federal judge dismissed a false arrest complaint a woman filed against Geico Insurance after she was jailed on charges of concealing her wrecked 1988 Mercury Tracer she was supposed to turn over after the insurer paid $1,108 for it.
"This was just a mess of a case," said attorney Craig Terrett of Norcross-based Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston & Zimet, who defended the case with partner J. Robb Cruser. "This was definitely the right result."
The plaintiffs attorney, Lawrenceville solo Talal "Perez" Ghosheh, was not available for comment.
According to Terrett and court filings, Rosinda Matute-Castellanos' Tracer was struck by a vehicle driven by Elmo Watkins in March 2012. Watkins was cited for failure to obey a traffic control device, and Geico paid $1,108 to cover the then-24-year-old compact car the following April.
The complaint filed in DeKalb State Court in 2016 said Geico was supposed to have the car picked up at Matute-Castellanos' residence, an apartment on Henderson Mill Road in northeast Atlanta. Geico's agent did not pick it up in a "timely manner," and Matute-Castellanos's landlord said it would be towed if she didn't move it.
She moved the car to a parking lot at a Kroger shopping center on Chamblee-Tucker Road and had Ghosheh tell Geico where to pick it up. Someone "is believed" to have picked it up.
Geico assigned an investigator to track the Tracer down, and Matute-Castellanos "through her counsel, worked diligently to find the vehicle" but was unable to do so; she reported the car stolen to the DeKalb County Police Department.
Geico, her complaint said, stopped communicating with Ghosheh and filed a complaint with the Chamblee Police Department accusing her of "concealment of property with security lien."
In March 2014, Matute-Castellanos was arrested "in front of her children" and taken to jail.
Terrett said he wasn't sure how long she remained in jail, "but it couldn't have been more than several hours."
The DeKalb County Solicitor's office declined to prosecute the case following month, and the charges were dropped.
In 2016, Matute-Castellanos sued Geico Indemnity Co. for claims including false arrest and malicious prosecution, as well as negligent hiring, training and supervision.
Geico, which had the case removed to Georgia's Northern District Court, had a substantially different account. The insurer argued in its motion seeking summary judgment that an agent with Insurance Auto Auctions made three attempts to retrieve the car, which was never at the apartment complex as promised. Matute-Castellanos refused to speak to the man during the last attempt, Geico said.