After an arbitrator ruled ten days ago that Josh Hamilton had not violated his drug treatment program following an alleged drug relapse, it looked like the Angels would be forced to pay him the rest of the roughly $83 million he is owed over the last three years of his contract. Now, however, it appears that the Angels are determined to do whatever they can to try to escape from the rest of Hamilton’s contract.

Before the Angels’ home opener on Friday evening, the team’s owner, Arte Moreno, spoke with the media. As one might expect, the discussion eventually turned to Hamilton, with a reporter asking Moreno whether the Angels would welcome Hamilton back to the team when he had recovered from his shoulder injury. Somewhat surprisingly, Moreno responded, “I will not say that.”

Instead, Moreno suggested that the team was exploring the possibility of cancelling the rest of Hamilton’s contract. As Moreno explained to reporters, “We have a contract with Hamilton and that contract has specific language, that he signed and that was approved, that said he could not drink or use drugs.”

The Major League Baseball Players Association quickly responded to Moreno’s comments on Friday evening:

“The MLBPA emphatically denies Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno’s assertions from earlier today that the Angels had requested and received the approval of the Union to insert language into Josh Hamilton’s contract that would supersede the provisions of the Joint Drug Agreement and/or the Basic Agreement. To the contrary, the collectively bargained provisions of the JDA and the Basic Agreement supersede all other player contract provisions and explicitly prevent Clubs from exactly the type of action Mr. Moreno alluded to in his press comments today.”

So who is right? And what are the odds that the Angels could terminate the rest of Hamilton’s contract?

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The owners of several rooftop businesses overlooking Wrigley Field are down to their last strike in a lawsuit challenging the Chicago Cubs’ on-going renovation of the 100-year-old stadium. As previously detailed here and here, the rooftop owners filed suit in January asking a federal court to block the Cubs from constructing two new proposed scoreboards, structures that the rooftops claim were intended to block their views into the stadium.

Last month, Judge Virginia Kendall denied the rooftop owners’ request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the Cubs from erecting the scoreboards. As I explained at the time, although the judge was unwilling to issue a TRO – an emergency order that would have blocked the Cubs from building the scoreboards for only a few weeks – she left open the possibility of granting the rooftops a preliminary injunction in the case (a more permanent order that would have forbid construction of the video boards throughout the entire course of the litigation).

The rooftop owners’ hopes were dashed once again on Thursday, however, when Judge Kendall refused to preliminarily enjoin the Cubs from constructing the scoreboards. Kendall’s opinion (available here) was a resounding victory for the team, with the judge concluding that the Cubs were likely to prevail on both the rooftops’ antitrust and breach of contract claims. As a result, the Wrigley renovations will be permitted to continue unabated.

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Kris Bryant has been the talk of the baseball world this spring. Following Monday’s news that the Cubs had officially reassigned Bryant to the team’s minor league camp, speculation shifted from focusing on whether Bryant would make the Cubs’ opening day roster to whether Bryant or the Major League Baseball Players Association will challenge the demotion.

For its part, the MLBPA helped fuel this speculation in an official statement released on Monday following Bryant’s demotion:

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The almost certain, impending demotion of Kris Bryant to the minor leagues for the season’s first couple weeks has brought renewed focus on Major League Baseball’s service time rules. As most readers are by now well aware, by sending Bryant to the minors for the first two weeks of the season, the Cubs will ensure that he fails to earn a full year’s worth of major league service time in 2015, preventing Bryant from becoming a free agent until 2021, rather than after the 2020 season. While it thus makes sense from a business standpoint for the Cubs to send Bryant to the minors for a fortnight to preserve an extra year of his services down the road, the thought that baseball’s top prospect – and MLB’s spring training home run leader – could begin the season in Triple-A has nevertheless led to calls for the Major League Baseball Players Association to take a stand on the issue.

Last week, for instance, Ken Rosenthal wrote a column arguing that the MLBPA should file a grievance if Bryant is demoted. Although he recognized that the union would almost certainly lose such a grievance – since arbitrators generally defer to teams on decisions regarding a player’s major-league readiness – Rosenthal nevertheless believed it would show the owners that the MLBPA won’t be pushed around on the issue. Meanwhile, others have taken a somewhat more patient approach, urging the MLBPA to address service time manipulation in the next round of collective bargaining talks following the 2016 season.

However, while service time manipulation certainly needs to be dealt with, the MLBPA has a much more significant and pressing – but often overlooked – issue to address in the next round of CBA negotiations: the players’ plummeting share of overall MLB league revenues.

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With opening day just a few weeks away, fantasy baseball season is officially upon us. And while some fantasy participants play solely for the love of the game, many others enjoy wagering some money on their team(s) as well. However, because gambling is prohibited in a number of states, this raises the question: is your fantasy baseball league legal?

This is a tougher question to answer than one might initially assume. Not only are there a host of different federal and state gambling laws potentially applying to fantasy baseball, but differences in the type of league one participates in (season-long vs. partial-season competition, live vs. automated draft) may also result in varying legal treatment.

To begin, the primary federal gambling laws do not appear to apply to most fantasy baseball leagues. The Uniform Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), for instance, contains a specific carve-out for fantasy sports games in which the outcome is “determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals … in multiple real-world sporting events.”

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Last week’s report that Josh Hamilton could be facing an imminent suspension from Major League Baseball following an alleged violation of his drug treatment program has brought a renewed focus on MLB’s Joint Drug Agreement (JDA), and in particular its treatment of non-performance enhancing drugs. As I noted last week, in addition to PEDs and stimulants, the JDA also restricts MLB players’ use of various “drugs of abuse,” including: THC, hashish, marijuana, synthetic THC, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, PCP, GHB (the date rape drug), and various opiates (oxycodone, heroin, morphine, etc.).

Interestingly, not all of these drugs are treated equally under the JDA. In particular, the JDA specifically carves out three – marijuana, hashish and synthetic THC – for special treatment. Although this carve-out wasn’t relevant to my post last week given the nature of the allegations against Hamilton, based on some of the comments it appears that MLB’s marijuana policy is of particular interest to some readers.

Because the JDA provisions governing drugs of abuse rarely come up, though – Jon Morosi reported last week, for instance, that no MLB player has been suspended for using an illegal narcotic since Josh Hamilton was himself suspended back in 2004 – relatively little attention has been paid to the intricacies of MLB’s marijuana policy.

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Wednesday’s news that Josh Hamilton could be facing an imminent suspension from Major League Baseball has set off a wave of speculation regarding not only the possible cause of the suspension, but also its potential length. Given Hamilton’s history, some have assumed he may have had a relapse of his earlier substance-abuse problems, triggering a possible suspension under MLB’s Joint Drug Agreement (JDA).

Although we presently have very little concrete information regarding Hamilton’s situation, here is what we do know: Mike DiGiovanna broke the news on Wednesday afternoon that Hamilton was in New York City meeting with MLB officials regarding a potential suspension. Ken Rosenthal reported later that, according to an unnamed baseball executive, Hamilton’s transgression was “worse” than a performance enhancing drug (PED) violation.

More alleged details emerged Wednesday evening, with Jon Heyman reporting Hamilton had confessed to a drug relapse involving “at least cocaine.” Heyman went on to report that Hamilton would be placed in MLB’s drug-treatment program as a first-time violator.

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The Chicago Cubs scored a preliminary victory on Thursday in the lawsuit filed last month by the owners of several of the rooftops looking into Wrigley Field.  As I explained at the time the suit was filed, the case is the latest in a series of legal proceedings challenging the on-going Wrigley Field renovations, and in particular the Cubs’ construction of two new outfield scoreboards.   Unlike earlier legal challenges to the project – which are focused on trying to overturn the city’s approval of the renovation plans – the rooftop owners’ suit against the Cubs charges the team with a variety of legal violations (antitrust, defamation, unfair business practices, breach of contract).

Last week, the rooftop owners asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) preventing the team from building the scoreboards until the case is resolved.  Following four hours of argument on Wednesday, Judge Virginia Kendall issued a decision on Thursday morning denying the rooftops’ request, helping clear the way for the Cubs to move forward with construction of the disputed scoreboards.

In order to receive a TRO, the rooftops generally had to show that they: 1) were likely to prevail in the case, and 2) would suffer an “irreparable” injury (i.e., one that cannot be fully remedied by money) if the restraining order was not granted.  The rooftop owners believed they had established both requirements, arguing in particular that the imminent construction of the scoreboards would destroy their business. Meanwhile, the Cubs argued that the rooftops were unlikely to prevail on any of the claims they had asserted in the lawsuit, and that they could easily be compensated for any damage to their business resulting from the construction of the scoreboards through the payment of monetary damages.

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You may have heard that football is in the midst of a bit of a concussion crisis. Not only is the National Football League facing a number of concussion-related lawsuits, but suits have been filed at the collegiate, high school, and Pop Warner levels as well. Meanwhile, both professional hockey and soccer are also facing their own concussion litigation.

Like football, hockey, and soccer, baseball is also – at times – a contact sport, and baseball players occasionally suffer concussions. In 2013, for instance, former outfielder Ryan Freel became the first professional baseball player to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – the brain disease often associated with professional football players – following a career during which he reportedly suffered nine or ten concussions.

So it is reasonable to ask whether Major League Baseball could be the next league to face a concussion-related lawsuit, and if so, how such a case would compare to those in the other sports?

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When the Atlanta Braves announced 15 months ago that the team would be moving to a new stadium in nearby Cobb County in 2017, the news surprised a number of people. The announcement was unexpected in part because the Braves’ current stadium, Turner Field, is less than 20 years old.

The news was also surprising, though, because it largely seemed to come out of the blue. There had been relatively little speculation that the Braves would be building a new stadium – let alone moving out of the Atlanta city limits – ahead of the formal announcement in November 2013. This was due in no small part to the fact Cobb County and the Braves negotiated the $397 million in public funding for SunTrust Park largely behind closed doors, without public input.

The lack of a public referendum for the stadium project is the basis of three legal challenges the Georgia Supreme Court heard earlier this week. If successful, these appeals could not only delay construction of the Braves’ new stadium, but could potentially disrupt the project’s financing.

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