Witness testimony started Wednesday with an accusation of negligent supervision within the excessive stakes trial in opposition to the Angels by the household of deceased pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
Tim Mead, an Angels worker of 40 years, was portrayed by the plaintiffs lawyer, Rusty Hardin, throughout 4 hours of direct examination as a well-meaning boss who repeatedly ignored firm coverage by failing to report the improper conduct of Eric Kay, the group communications director who gave Skaggs the fentanyl capsules that killed him.
Hardin introduced up a litany of situations the place Kay possible violated Angels guidelines that might have resulted in self-discipline and even termination lengthy earlier than the July 2019 street journey to Texas throughout which Skaggs died in his lodge room after chopping up and snorting the illicit medicine offered by Kay.
Mead acknowledged that he knew of Kay’s years-long episodes of weird habits, an extramarital affair with an intern, and issues with prescription medicine, however that he by no means reported any of it to human sources.
Hardin requested if he was placing Kay forward of the group by doing every thing he may to save lots of him, permit him to regain his well being and hold him employed.
Mead responded: “I suppose I wasn’t consciously doing it on the time. … I used to be involved concerning the group, for him, his household and my employees.”
Hardin requested Mead if he was considering of an obligation to group or to Kay, and Mead replied, “A little bit of each.”
Hardin: Did you acknowledge a battle between these roles?
Mead: “Sure that entered my thoughts.”
Hardin asserted that it strains credulity that Mead asserted he knew nothing of Kay utilizing or distributing illicit opioids when on the final day of the 2017 season Kay’s spouse, Camela, reached out to Mead to infom him the household was conducting an intervention of their residence that night.
Mead and Tom Taylor, the Angels’ touring secretary, visited the Kays the subsequent morning, and Camela Kay testified throughout a deposition that the Kays directed him to Eric’s bed room, the place he had stashed 60 capsules, saved in handfuls of 10 in small plastic luggage.
Pressed by Hardin, Mead repeated that he couldn’t say he didn’t do what Camela Kay testified he did, however that he had no recollection of it. Mead insisted that he knew nothing of Eric Kay utilizing or distributing illicit medicine to Skaggs or anybody else.
Cross-examination of Mead by Angels attorneys will happen Friday. The court docket is in recess each Thursday throughout what is predicted to be a two-month trial.
Following Mead on the witness stand shall be Taylor and group president John Carpino. Greater than 75 names are on the witness checklist, together with present Angels star Mike Trout, former supervisor Mike Scioscia and several other former gamers who testified in depositions that Kay or Skaggs gave them opioids.
Legal professionals for the Angels and the household spoke to the jury for the primary time Tuesday, delivering dramatically completely different opening statements.
Angels proprietor Arte Moreno sat within the entrance row together with Carpino, though neither one was current Wednesday. Skaggs’ widow, Carli, sat subsequent to Tyler’s mom, Debbie Hetman. Tyler’s father, Darrell Skaggs, was absent due to poor well being.
Representing Skaggs’ widow and fogeys are two attorneys with a long time of expertise representing high-profile and celeb purchasers — Shawn Holley and Hardin.
Early in her profession, Holley, 63, labored below Johnnie Cochran and was a member of the O.J. Simpson protection group in 1995. Since then, she has represented purchasers starting from leisure titans Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dogg, Axl Rose and the Kardashian household to athletes resembling Trevor Bauer, Mike Tyson, Lamar Odom, Reggie Bush and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Hardin, 83, represented the Arthur Andersen accounting agency through the Enron scandal greater than 20 years in the past. He additionally has gained favorable verdicts for quite a few athletes resembling Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Warren Moon, Scottie Pippen, Calvin Murphy, Steve Francis, Rudy Tomjanovich and Rafer Alston.
The Angels are represented by Todd Theodora, chief govt of the nationally revered regulation agency Theodora Oringher. Theodora and the Angels have had a longstanding skilled relationship.
Theodora served as lead trial counsel for the Angels within the swimsuit introduced by the town of Anaheim in 2005 when the group re-branded because the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The town sought greater than $300 million in damages in opposition to the Angels, who prevailed in a jury verdict.
Theodora wouldn’t touch upon the Skaggs case due to the continuing litigation, however after the Angels’ court docket victory relating to the title change, he described to The Instances the all-consuming nature of a prolonged trial.
“You end up actually serious about the case from the second you get up till the second you go to mattress and plenty of occasions in the course of the night time as effectively,” Theodora stated.
The stakes are excessive within the Skaggs trial. Holley delivered opening statements for the plaintiffs and stated a good estimation of Skaggs’ misplaced future earnings is $118 million. She added that the Angels should additionally compensate the household for “lack of companionship, solace, ethical help and monetary safety.” And, Holley stated, the household must be awarded punitive damages “not solely as a result of [the Angels] did not hold Tyler protected, they put him in hurt’s manner.”
Taking a deliberate, soft-spoken method, Holley walked the jury by means of a timeline of Kay’s drug use and eventual distribution of opioids. She stated Angels group physician Craig Milhouse wrote Kay quite a few oxycodone prescriptions regardless of the actual fact he lacked any authentic medical situation.
Holley tried to determine that Kay’s drug use escalated 12 months after 12 months, saying there was “an entire failure by the Angels to understand the magnitude of the issue.”
Holley stated that Kay revealed his drug use in textual content messages and emails, and {that a} clubhouse attendant witnessed Kay snorting traces of medication in a kitchen space exterior the Angels clubhouse.
Citing proof in Kay’s prison trial — he’s serving 22 years in jail for supplying Skaggs with fentanyl — Holley stated Kay used his Angels e mail deal with to buy illicit medicine on the web site OfferUp.
By 2019, Kay’s drug utilization had reached some extent that he went by means of an outpatient remedy program that ended shortly earlier than the Angels went on the street journey to Texas throughout which Skaggs died. Holley contended that human sources requires a “health for responsibility examination” earlier than returning to work following a drug rehab stint.
“The Angels, once more, did nothing,” she stated. “So lower than two months after studying Eric Kay had been dealing medicine to gamers, two months after Eric Kay overdoses and fewer than a month after outpatient rehab ended, the Angels determined to ship Kay on the street journey. Inside hours, Tyler Skaggs was lifeless.”
Theodora countered by saying the group “is aware of proper from mistaken,” and that it was Skaggs who engaged in “reckless selections that we educate our youngsters and grandchildren to not do, for good motive.”
Theodora identified that along with the counterfeit fentanyl tablet that Skaggs chopped up and snorted the July 2019 night time he died in a Texas lodge room, he had a blood-alcohol stage of .140 and a therapeutic stage of oxycodone.
“The proof will present he was not enjoying by means of ache, he was not prescribed these capsules,” Theodora stated. “It’s downright shameless for anybody to say it was justified for somebody to cut up and snort opioids, that they had been simply getting used to get by means of a protracted season.”
Skaggs was concerned in three crimes, Theodora stated, “one, prison possession; two, taking or ingesting illicit medicine; and three — as you’ll hear from 5 gamers — Tyler was distributing illicit capsules to them.”
Opening statements and Mead’s testimony underscored the explanations a latest one-day settlement convention between the 2 sides went nowhere,
Skaggs was discovered lifeless in his lodge room in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, earlier than the Angels had been scheduled to start out a sequence in opposition to the Texas Rangers. The Tarrant County medical expert discovered that along with the opioids, Skaggs had a blood-alcohol stage of 0.12. The post-mortem decided he died from asphyxia after aspirating on his personal vomit, and that his demise was unintended.
Prosecutors alleged Kay offered opioids to Skaggs and a minimum of 5 different skilled baseball gamers from 2017 to 2019. A number of gamers testified through the trial about acquiring illicit oxycodone capsules from Kay.
The Skaggs household filed their lawsuit in June 2021, alleging the Angels knew, or ought to have recognized, that Kay was supplying medicine to Skaggs and different gamers. Testimony throughout Kay’s prison trial established that Kay was additionally a longtime person of oxycodone and that the Angels knew it.
The Angels responded by saying {that a} former federal prosecutor the group employed to conduct an impartial investigation into Skaggs’ demise decided no group executives had been conscious or knowledgeable of any worker offering opioids to any participant.
