By
Steve Kallas (posted by Rick Morris)
As
everybody knows by now, it really hit the fan with Alex Rodriguez’s legal team
filing a complaint in federal court in Manhattan against Major League Baseball
(“MLB”) (and Commissioner Bud Selig) and the MLB Players Association.
While
little attention has been paid to the Complaint (the overwhelming majority of
coverage has gone to the now-public Fredric Horowitz arbitration decision (with
no redactions)), it seems to this writer that something was missing with the
papers filed; that is, a motion for a preliminary injunction (or a stay of the
arbitrator’s suspension decision; we’ll go with injunction for the rest of this
article).
Make
no mistake, without such a filing, this Complaint, in and of itself, doesn’t
offer A-Rod a chance to actually play baseball come Opening Day.
SO
WHAT HAPPENED?
According
to a number of published reports prior to Monday’s filing, A-Rod’s lawyer, Joe
Tacopina, said that A-Rod’s legal team would be filing for an injunction this
past Monday. Apparently, no motion
papers for an injunction were filed yesterday.
Why
not?
Well,
according to Ken Davidoff and Rich Calder in the New York Post:
“Team A-Rod didn’t file for an
injunction as threatened, attorney
Joseph Tacopina said Monday,
because such action wouldn’t be
necessary until the start of
the regular season – the Yankees
start their schedule on April
1 – and there is hope this case can
resolved by then.”
Wow! Let’s look at those two reasons.
THE
CASE MIGHT BE RESOLVED BY THEN?
What? There is zero chance, it says here, that this
case can be resolved by April 1 with the result that A-Rod is allowed to play
on April 1. It’s hard to believe that
Joe Tacopina would be making such laughable statements.
Could
it be that there has been some discussion between MLB and A-Rod’s people that
would result in a suspension of less than 162 games to make everything go
away? You know, 100 games, 125 games,
150 games?
That’s
the only possibility this writer can come up with.
SUCH
ACTION WOULDN’T BE NECESSARY UNTIL THE START OF THE REGULAR SEASON (APRIL 1)?
Well,
clearly A-Rod’s lawyers aren’t going to wait until April 1 to file a motion for
an injunction. Since January 13 (the day
the complaint was filed) is literally only 78 days away from Opening Day, it
says here that the lawyers really can’t wait very long. In fact, if they wait until, say, March 1 to
file papers, a judge will very likely say you filed your complaint back on
January 13 and you waited until now to file a motion for a preliminary
injunction?
It
says here that a motion for a preliminary injunction has to be filed sooner
rather than later.
Just
the motion papers alone take time (as in a few weeks): that is, A-Rod files his
motion for a preliminary injunction, the responding defendants (at least MLB
and the commissioner, maybe the Players Association (that will be interesting))
then have a certain amount of time to answer.
Then A-Rod’s lawyers file a reply brief and, possibly, the responding defendants
may request to file a sur-reply brief, which is usually only allowed at the
judge’s discretion.
After
that, the judge can order (if he wants) oral argument on the motion or even a
hearing with specific witnesses.
As
you can imagine, this all takes time.
SO,
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Again,
as this case file (as of Monday, January 13) has no motion filed for a
preliminary injunction, this complaint alone cannot get A-Rod on the field by
opening day. A motion has to be made for
such relief and it says here that a preliminary injunction motion should be
made sooner rather than later.
We’ll
see what happens next.
@
COPYRIGHT 2014 BY STEVE KALLAS ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
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