Witness testimony started Wednesday with an accusation of negligent supervision within the excessive stakes trial towards 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 crew communications director who gave Skaggs the fentanyl drugs that killed him.
Hardin introduced up a litany of situations the place Kay seemingly violated Angels guidelines that would have resulted in self-discipline and even termination lengthy earlier than the July 2019 highway journey to Texas throughout which Skaggs died in his lodge room after chopping up and snorting the illicit medication offered by Kay.
Mead acknowledged that he knew of Kay’s years-long episodes of weird habits, an extra-marital affair with an intern, and issues with prescription remedy, 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 part he might to save lots of him, enable him to regain his well being and hold him employed.
Mead responded: “I assume I wasn’t consciously doing it on the tim. … I used to be involved in regards to the group, for him, his household and my workers.”
Hardin requested Mead if he was pondering 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 dwelling that night.
Mead and Tom Taylor, the Angels’ touring secretary, visited the Kays the following morning, and Camela Kay testified throughout a deposition that the Kays directed him to Eric’s bed room, the place he had stashed 60 drugs, 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 medication to Skaggs or anybody else.
Cross-examination of Mead by Angels legal professionals will happen Friday. The courtroom is in recess each Thursday throughout what is anticipated to be a two-month trial.
Following Mead on the witness stand shall be Taylor and crew president John Carpino. Greater than 75 names are on the witness checklist, together with present Angels star Mike Trout, former supervisor Mike Scioscia and a number of other former gamers who testified in depositions that Kay or Skaggs gave them opioids.
Attorneys 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 legal professionals with many years of expertise representing high-profile and movie star shoppers — Shawn Holley and Hardin.
Early in her profession, Holley, 63, labored beneath Johnnie Cochran and was a member of the O.J. Simpson protection crew in 1995. Since then, she has represented shoppers starting from leisure titans Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dogg, Axl Rose and the Kardashian household to athletes corresponding to Trevor Bauer, Mike Tyson, Lamar Odom, Reggie Bush and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Hardin, 83, represented the Arthur Andersen accounting agency in the course of the Enron scandal greater than 20 years in the past. He additionally has gained favorable verdicts for quite a few athletes corresponding to 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 go well with introduced by town of Anaheim in 2005 when the crew re-branded because the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Town sought greater than $300 million in damages towards the Angels, who prevailed in a jury verdict.
Theodora wouldn’t touch upon the Skaggs case due to the continued litigation, however after the Angels’ courtroom victory relating to the identify change, he described to The Instances the all-consuming nature of a prolonged trial.
“You end up actually enthusiastic about the case from the second you get up till the second you go to mattress and lots of instances in the course of the night time as properly,” Theodora mentioned.
The stakes are excessive within the Skaggs trial. Holley delivered opening statements for the plaintiffs and mentioned 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 mentioned, 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 strategy, Holley walked the jury by a timeline of Kay’s drug use and eventual distribution of opioids. She mentioned Angels crew physician Craig Milhouse wrote Kay quite a few oxycodone prescriptions regardless of the very fact he lacked any professional medical situation.
Holley tried to ascertain that Kay’s drug use escalated 12 months after 12 months, saying there was “a whole failure by the Angels to understand the magnitude of the issue.”
Holley mentioned that Kay revealed his drug use in textual content messages and emails, and {that a} clubhouse attendant witnessed Kay snorting strains of medication in a kitchen space outdoors the Angels clubhouse.
Citing proof in Kay’s legal trial — he’s serving 22 years in jail for supplying Skaggs with fentanyl — Holley mentioned Kay used his Angels e mail deal with to buy illicit medication on the web site OfferUp.
By 2019, Kay’s drug utilization had reached some extent that he went by an outpatient remedy program that ended shortly earlier than the Angels went on the highway journey to Texas throughout which Skaggs died. Holley contended that human sources requires a “health for obligation examination” earlier than returning to work following a drug rehab stint.
“The Angels, once more, did nothing,” she mentioned. “So lower than two months after studying Eric Kay had been dealing medication 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 highway journey. Inside hours, Tyler Skaggs was useless.”
Theodora countered by saying the crew “is aware of proper from mistaken,” and that it was Skaggs who engaged in “reckless decisions that we train our youngsters and grandchildren to not do, for good purpose.”
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 degree of .140 and a therapeutic degree of oxycodone.
“The proof will present he was not taking part in by ache, he was not prescribed these drugs,” Theodora mentioned. “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 a protracted season.”
Skaggs was concerned in three crimes, Theodora mentioned, “one, legal possession; two, taking or ingesting illicit medication; and three — as you’ll hear from 5 gamers — Tyler was distributing illicit drugs 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 useless in his lodge room in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, earlier than the Angels had been scheduled to start out a sequence towards the Texas Rangers. The Tarrant County health worker discovered that along with the opioids, Skaggs had a blood-alcohol degree of 0.12. The post-mortem decided he died from asphyxia after aspirating on his personal vomit, and that his dying was unintended.
Prosecutors alleged Kay offered opioids to Skaggs and no less than 5 different skilled baseball gamers from 2017 to 2019. A number of gamers testified in the course of the trial about acquiring illicit oxycodone drugs from Kay.
The Skaggs household filed their lawsuit in June 2021, alleging the Angels knew, or ought to have identified, that Kay was supplying medication to Skaggs and different gamers. Testimony throughout Kay’s legal 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 crew employed to conduct an impartial investigation into Skaggs’ dying decided no crew executives had been conscious or knowledgeable of any worker offering opioids to any participant.
