DENVER (CN) — Major League Baseball on Thursday asked a federal judge to toss a lawsuit from 17 former scouts who say that 30 MLB baseball teams refused to hire them due to their age.
Colorado is the wrong venue for the suit, MLB said.
The scouts involved in the case have decades of experience in baseball. At the time of their termination, they were all over the age of 55.
That includes lead plaintiff James Benedict, 63, who worked as a scout for the Chicago Cubs for 32 years before he was fired. Benedict said he was then turned down for jobs with the San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Colorado Rockies, Cleveland Guardians and Boston Red Sox.
The trouble, the plaintiffs contend, started with Rob Manfred. The former CEO of the MLB, Manfred succeeded Bud Selig as the tenth MLB commissioner in 2015.
In March 2018, the plaintiffs say MLB shut down the organization’s centralized scouting bureau, and Manfred issued a directive to fire all remaining older scouts. MLB has filed to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it doesn't belong in the U.S. District of Colorado.
“From the complaint, we’ve been struggling to figure out why are we here," Adam Lupion, an attorney with New York-based firm Proskauer Rose who is representing the MLB, said in court on Thursday.
"There is no connection to this forum, other than the handful of plaintiffs who claim they sought employment with the Colorado Rockies," Lupion said. He also argued that the case hinged on the hiring decisions of 30 different baseball teams, not the singular actions of the commissioner of baseball.
Scout attorney Eric Roberson pushed back, saying Colorado was the best venue for the lawsuit. All the named teams had scouts working in the state, he said, and had recruited from local school teams.
“We allege that [the MLB] participated in a scheme to alter the labor market nationwide, including in Colorado,” Roberson said. “Using Covid-19 as a cover, they decided that they wanted to get rid of older scouts. They did it in unison, because Major League Baseball used the power of its antitrust exception to collude openly.”
Roberson said it would be relatively easy for outside attorneys to join the Colorado bar, allowing defendants to bring in their own legal teams. He also said Colorado seemed like the simplest solution, as the alternative could mean filing dozens of lawsuits across the country and then applying for multijurisdiction litigation.
Besides, Roberson noted, downtown Denver's Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse was nice and conveniently located near an airport. U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico, a Trump appointee, presided over the case from his 10th-floor courtroom, where many of the offices offer views of the Colorado Rockies' home field.
While many scouts work in Colorado and all of the named teams have played in the state, only one of the teams — the Colorado Rockies — have rejected scouts for jobs in Colorado, Domenico noted. While he seemed inclined to keep claims against the Rockies in the U.S. District of Colorado, he said he wasn't sure Denver was the right venue for the whole case.
As an alternative, Roberson suggested moving to the Southern District of New York where MLB offices are located — though fewer players are scouted in the Big Apple.
“To divvy up this case is a jurisdictional nightmare that this court need not open up,” Roberson cautioned.
Domenico did not say how he would decide the issue, other than to promise a written order "relatively soon."
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