The legal controversy surrounding Alex Rodriguez seemingly knows no end. Fresh off a season-long suspension – and a year filled with litigation – Rodriguez is currently preparing to return to the New York Yankees for the 2015 season. In addition to the $61 million the Yankees still owe A-Rod under the 10-year contract he signed back in 2007, Rodriguez can potentially earn another $24 million in bonuses by reaching four different home run milestones in the next three years.

Under the terms of his 2007 contract, the Yankees will pay A-Rod $6 million every time he moves up the all-time home run leaderboard. Rodriguez’s 654 career home runs currently rank fifth all-time, trailing only Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds. If Rodriguez hits six home runs in 2015, he would earn the first $6 million bonus by tying Mays’ career 660 home runs.

According to a recent report in the New York Daily News, however, the Yankees are preparing to contest the bonus provisions in A-Rod’s contract. When the team agreed to the milestone bonus structure back in 2007, it assumed Rodriguez’s march to the all-time home run crown would prove to be quite lucrative. In light of Rodriguez’s subsequent fall from grace, though, the team now understandably thinks A-Rod’s home run milestones will not be nearly as valuable as it initially hoped. As a result, the team is exploring its legal options.

So do the Yankees have any realistic chance of voiding Rodriguez’s bonuses? As is so often the case with the law, the answer is: It depends.

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The proposed renovation of Wrigley Field continues to keep Chicago-area lawyers busy. A week and a half after the owners of rooftops overlooking the stadium filed their second lawsuit against the city of Chicago – arguing that the city’s approval of the renovation was legally invalid – the owners of two rooftop businesses sued the team itself on Tuesday.   The new lawsuit asserts a variety of claims against the Cubs, including illegal monopolization, deceptive trade practices, defamation, and breach of contract.  A copy of the complaint is available here.

I discussed the history of the dispute between the rooftop owners and Cubs in a post last week.  In short, though, the rooftop owners contend that the team’s renovation plans – including two new scoreboards to be constructed in left and right field – will block their views into Wrigley Field.  Although property owners traditionally do not have any legal right to an unobstructed view – meaning that your neighbor can lawfully build a structure blocking your ocean view, for instance – in this case the Cubs and rooftop owners entered into an agreement back in 2004 giving the rooftops some limited rights to an unobstructed view into the stadium.

Despite this agreement, until yesterday the rooftop owners had focused their legal efforts on challenging the city’s approval of the Wrigley Field renovation.  This was due to contractual language in the rooftop owners’ 2004 agreement with the Cubs stating that “Any expansion of Wrigley Field approved by governmental authorities shall not be a violation of this Agreement.”

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The MASN dispute between the Orioles and Nationals continues to wage on in New York state court. As a review, the fight involves an arbitration decision issued last year by MLB’s Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee (the “RSDC”), awarding the Nationals roughly $60 million dollars per year in broadcast rights fees from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. This award was nearly $30 million more per year than the team had previously been receiving, but far less than the roughly $120 million it had requested.

The Orioles, who own a majority share of the MASN network, have contested the arbitration outcome, contending that the arbitrators – the owners of the New York Mets, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Tampa Bay Rays – were biased in favor of the Nationals. MASN and the Orioles filed suit back in August, asking the court to overturn the arbitration decision. Last month, the court ordered MLB to produce documents in the case relating to commissioner-elect Rob Manfred’s involvement in the arbitration proceedings.

This week both MASN and the Orioles filed new papers with the court, further describing the alleged bias of MLB and its arbitrators.

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Earlier this off-season, the Chicago Cubs began work on their long-awaited renovations to Wrigley Field. The team launched phase one of the project in October, tearing down the stadium’s existing bleachers with the hope of rebuilding and expanding them in time for Opening Day. In addition, the $575 million project will eventually include new clubhouses, luxury suites, concession areas and signage throughout the stadium — as well as the construction of a nearby hotel and office-building complex.

Unless, that is, owners of the rooftops overlooking Wrigley Field get their way. These building owners have filed two lawsuits over the past four months — the first coming this past August, and the second on Thursday — in an attempt to stop the renovations. In particular, the rooftop owners fear that two new scoreboards to be constructed as part of the renovation project will block their views into the stadium, threatening the roughly $20 million in annual ticket revenue the rooftops currently generate.

In an interesting twist, though, rather than suing the Cubs, the building owners have instead sued the City of Chicago in the hopes of having the renovation halted. Understanding why the rooftop owners would sue the city, rather than the team, requires some knowledge of the lengthy history of the dispute.

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This is the final installment of a three-part series looking back at what has been an unusually eventful year for Major League Baseball in the courtroom. Part One recapped the legal maneuvering surrounding Alex Rodriguez’s suspension and the Oakland A’s proposed move to San Jose, while Part Two looked at MLB’s 2014 minimum wage and gender discrimination issues. This part concludes the series by reviewing the status of various television-related legal proceedings for MLB and its teams, as well as covering an assortment of other legal developments.

Television

Television revenues are vital to MLB’s business, so it should be no surprise that the league was involved in a series of important TV-related legal proceedings in 2014. Perhaps the most significant of these cases is Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, a suit challenging MLB’s television policies under federal antitrust law.

Wendy Thurm has previously discussed the Garber suit on several occasions. By way of a brief recap, the case alleges that MLB’s television policies violate the Sherman Act in two ways: first, by imposing unreasonable blackout policies on fans; and second, by selling only league-wide pay-per-view subscription packages (MLB Extra Innings and MLB.tv) rather than allowing teams to offer their own individual out-of-market plans. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second in a series of posts looking back at the most significant events in what has been an unusually eventful year for Major League Baseball on the legal front. Part One reviewed the legal maneuvering surrounding Alex Rodriguez’s suspension and the Oakland A’s proposed move to San Jose. This part now looks at baseball’s minimum wage issues and two potentially embarrassing gender discrimination suits filed against MLB and its teams in 2014.

MLB Pay Practices

MLB’s allegedly unlawful pay practices were the subject of considerable legal scrutiny in 2014. Most significantly, in February the league was hit with the first of two class action lawsuits filed on behalf of former minor league baseball players, cases asserting that MLB’s minor league salary scale violates federal and state minimum wage and overtime laws.

In Senne v. Office of the Commissioner, the plaintiffs contend that MLB has violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by paying minor league players as little as $3,300 per year, without overtime, despite often requiring players to work 50 or more hours per week. Moreover, as the suit notes, minor leaguers typically are not paid at all for their participation in spring training, fall instructional leagues, or mandatory offseason workout programs. All told, then, the suit claims that most minor league players receive well below the federally guaranteed minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

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Like any multi-billion dollar organization, Major League Baseball faces its share of lawsuits in any given year. Even by its standards, though, 2014 was a particularly busy and eventful year for MLB on the legal front.

This week I’ll be reviewing and providing updates for the most significant events of the last year. In this installment, we’ll look back at the legal wrangling surrounding Alex Rodriguez’s season-long PED suspension and the on-going saga regarding the Oakland A’s proposed move to San Jose. Read the rest of this entry »

Following yesterday’s historic announcement by President Obama that the United States will re-establish full relations with Cuba, many baseball fans have been speculating what impact this news is likely to have on Major League Baseball. Cuba, of course, is a baseball hotbed, producing a number of impact MLB players in recent years (Jose Abreu, Yasiel Puig, Yoenis Cespedes).

In the long-term, normalized relations with Cuba could potentially result in a significant influx of Cuban talent into U.S. professional baseball, while also opening up other lucrative business opportunities for MLB. In the short-term, however, yesterday’s announcement will likely have little immediate impact on professional baseball in the United States, and if anything, might even temporarily decrease the flow of players defecting to the U.S. from Cuba. Read the rest of this entry »

Another week, another development on the minor league salary front. Less than six days after a federal antitrust lawsuit was filed challenging the minor league salary structure, Minor League Baseball’s (MiLB) vice president, Stanley Brand, announced at the Winter Meetings on Thursday that his organization would launch a vigorous lobbying campaign in 2015, asking Congress to pass legislation protecting the industry from federal minimum wage and maximum hour laws.

Brand’s announcement comes in response to two other class action lawsuits filed earlier this year alleging that the minor league pay scale violates the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) (Wendy Thurm previously discussed the first of these suits here). These cases – filed on behalf of two groups of former minor league players – contend that once all of the hours minor league players work each year are accounted for (including spring training, the regular season, and fall instructional leagues), most minor leaguers are effectively paid less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. And despite often working more than 50 hours per week, minor league players do not receive overtime.

Interestingly, like the minor league antitrust lawsuit filed a couple weeks ago – which appears to be covered by baseball’s antitrust exemption – professional baseball is arguably already exempt from the FLSA as well under an exception covering “seasonal amusement and recreational establishments” (29 U.S.C. 213(a)(3)). Under the exception, any amusement-related business (theme parks, carnivals, circuses, and the like) that operates on a seasonal basis – basically seven months or less per year, although the law is a little more nuanced – is not required to pay its workers minimum wage or overtime. Read the rest of this entry »

In the latest in a series of legal challenges to the minor league salary structure, a new federal class-action lawsuit filed on Friday alleges that Major League Baseball’s treatment of minor league baseball players runs afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In Miranda v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, four former minor league players (Sergio Miranda, Jeff Dominguez, Jorge Padilla and Cirilo Cruz) contend that MLB teams have violated federal antitrust law by illegally conspiring to fix minor league players’ salaries at below-market rates. Still, despite the merits of the players’ claims, the suit’s odds of success are relatively low.

The Miranda suit alleges that MLB unlawfully suppresses minor league players’ salaries in a variety of ways. By subjecting North American amateur players to the first-year player draft each June, Major League Baseball prevents draftees from selling their services to the highest bidder — instead forcing them to negotiate with only a single team. MLB then artificially reduces the size of the signing bonuses that entry level players receive through its domestic and international signing bonus pool restrictions.

Once players have entered the minor leagues, their annual salaries are then largely dictated on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by their teams in accordance with MLB-imposed, minor league salary “guidelines.” And because MLB teams retain the exclusive rights to their minor league players’ services for seven years, many players go their entire careers without ever being able to sell their services in a competitive market. As a result, the suit asserts that most minor league players earn as little as $3,000 to $7,500 per year. Read the rest of this entry »