A Third District Court of Appeal ruling is bad news for Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo.

The Third DCA recently ruled in favor of Robert F. Piper III as chair of the political committee, Take Back Our City and affirmed a writ of mandamus issued in Miami Dade Circuit Court.

The writ of mandamus directed the city clerk, Todd B. Hannon, to deliver to the Miami-Dade County supervisor of elections a petition to recall Carollo.

Take Back Our City has been seeking to recall Carollo as a Miami city commissioner for alleged abuses of power, according to its attorney Juan-Carlos Planas. On its website, the group accused Carollo of lying to a Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics & Public Trust.

In that incident, Carollo told the ethics board he showed up outside a Little Havana nightclub in the early morning and went to park his car. However, court pleadings show Carollo denied having whipped out a city parking placard moments later and then saying to a nightclub employee that he was conducting an "official investigation." When the employee challenged him, Carollo allegedly shouted, "I'm the law!"

In the case before the Third DCA, group chairman Piper filed a petition to recall the Miami commissioner. Piper electronically submitted the recall petition Feb. 29 and hand-filed the recall petition two days later.

Read the Third DCA opinion:

Since Miami does not have provisions for recall petitions, the process follows state law rules. Organizers have 30 days to collect signatures from 5% or more registered voters in Carollo's District 3. If at least 1,577 of the signatures are valid, then the second phase starts during which organizers have 60 days to collect 4,700 signatures from District 3 voters.

"That evening of the 29th, we emailed the Dropbox links of the petitions to the clerk, telling him these are the filings of the petitions and we would bring these to their office on Monday morning," Planas said. "They did not tell us to come right now. They did not tell us to come on Sunday. They didn't give us any response."

On Monday, the Clerk's Office notified Piper the recall petition would not be transmitted to the Supervisor of Elections. The Clerk's Office said the Feb. 29 submission was improper because "the Clerk's office offers no electronic filing option for recall petitions."

Next, the Clerk's Office claimed the submission was deficient because the statute contained a non-delegable duty requiring the chair of the committee to file the petition. Finally, the Clerk's Office asserted that the March 2 filing was untimely because the first signature was obtained  Jan. 31, falling outside of the 30-day petition period.

The Third DCA states that in response, Piper filed an Emergency Complaint for Writ of Mandamus against Miami and the clerk, and Carollo later intervened in the proceeding. Following a hearing, the trial court issued the writ of mandamus, directing the clerk to deliver the recall petition to the supervisor of elections.

Planas expects that Carollo will continue fighting the results in court. Neither Carollo nor city attorney Victoria Mendez nor Hannon responded to a request for comment on the ruling and next steps.

Planas believes Carollo will base any further appeals on the issue of timeliness of the recall petition, but Piper appeared confident about the Third DCA's ruling be affirmed on appeal.

"I expect he will lose if he does appeal," Planas said. "I [expect] us to win at every level."