Shohei Ohtani’s title is in headlines once more.
And, for the second time in two years, not for baseball causes.
Information emerged this week that Ohtani, the Dodgers’ two-way star and reigning Nationwide League MVP, was being sued alongside along with his agent in Hawaii by an actual property investor and dealer.
The declare: That Ohtani and his consultant, Nez Balelo of Artistic Artists Company, had the plaintiffs fired from a $240-million luxurious housing growth that Ohtani had been contracted to assist endorse.
The contours of the case are sophisticated; referring to contract regulation, tortious interference and two years of alleged disputes between Balelo and the plaintiffs, developer Kevin J. Hayes Sr. and actual property dealer Tomoko Matsumoto, main as much as their termination from the undertaking.
However because it pertains to Ohtani and this present Dodgers season, just one query actually issues:
Will the state of affairs create any distraction for him off the sector?
When pressed on that Wednesday, he shortly shut the concept down.
“I wish to concentrate on the sector,” Ohtani mentioned in Japanese, after the Dodgers misplaced to the Angels to fall out of first place within the NL West. “In the present day, this staff continued to lose, so I’d just like the staff as an entire to win a sport shortly and attempt to win each sport.”
Based on the lawsuit, Hayes and Matsumoto reached an endorsement cope with Ohtani in 2023 for his or her luxurious housing growth on Hawaii’s Massive Island. The Japanese star was not solely to be a spokesperson for the undertaking, but additionally a resident dedicated to buying one of many growth’s 14 residences as an offseason house.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit claimed, Balelo more and more demanded unspecified concessions (the main points of which have been redacted within the submitting) over the past two years from Hayes and Matsumoto — changing into what it described as a “disruptive pressure” who “inserted himself into each side of the connection.”
Final month, the lawsuit alleged, Balelo went to Hayes’ and Matsumoto’s enterprise associate, Kingsbarn Realty Capital, and threatened litigation if the 2 weren’t terminated from the undertaking.
“Kingsbarn overtly admitted … that Balelo had demanded the terminations and that they have been being completed solely to placate him,” the lawsuit mentioned. “Particularly, Kingsbarn acknowledged that Balelo had threatened to pull Kingsbarn right into a separate lawsuit except it terminated Hayes and Matsumoto.”
The lawsuit additionally claims that Balelo’s supposed menace of litigation — which pertained to the usage of Ohtani’s title, picture and likeness rights getting used to advertise a separate actual property undertaking on Hawaii’s Massive Island — was “baseless,” amounting to an “abuse of energy” by Ohtani’s longtime agent to “pressure a enterprise associate to betray its contractual obligations and strip Plaintiffs of the very undertaking they conceived and constructed.”
A Kingsbarn spokesperson instructed The Athletic this week that the allegations “are fully frivolous and with out advantage,” and that “Kingsbarn takes full duty for its actions relating to Kevin Hayes and for eradicating Tomoko Matsumoto because the undertaking’s dealer.”
Ohtani’s direct involvement within the dispute seems restricted.
Based on an individual with data of the state of affairs who wasn’t approved to talk publicly, the plaintiffs dealt nearly solely with Balelo, who has represented Ohtani since he got here to the main leagues from Japan earlier than the 2018 season.
Nonetheless, as a result of Balelo was performing on behalf of Ohtani, the celebrity was included as a defendant as nicely.
Meaning — identical to in March 2024, when scandal swirled round Ohtani after his former interpreter was discovered to have stolen cash from his financial institution accounts to repay unlawful playing money owed — Ohtani has one other potential disturbance to navigate off the sector.
Granted, Ohtani hardly appeared affected by final 12 months’s controversy, serving to the Dodgers win the World Sequence whereas profitable the third MVP award of his profession. And this present lawsuit, in accordance with lawyer and authorized knowledgeable Arash Sadat of Mills Sadat Dowlat LLP, presents a way more customary kind of authorized dispute usually seen round actual property offers.
“This type of stuff occurs on a regular basis,” Sadat mentioned. “They’re not uncommon in any respect.”
Sadat famous that, primarily based on the lawsuit, it’s not clear “what Shohei knew and didn’t know” when it got here to Balelo’s alleged interactions with the plaintiffs.
“The entire allegations within the grievance relate to conduct by his agent,” Sadat mentioned. “If the plaintiffs on this case may present any direct involvement by Ohtani, you may guess that will have been included within the grievance.”
If the case have been to proceed with out a decision, it’s attainable Ohtani may finally be required to present a deposition detailing his data of the alleged occasions.
That, nonetheless, will not be one thing that will occur imminently. And even when it did, Sadat added, it’s unclear whether or not his testimony would even be launched publicly, given that giant swaths of redactions within the authentic lawsuit of seemingly proprietary enterprise data.
Sadat speculated the possibilities of the case ever going to trial as slim. The overwhelming majority of such lawsuits are usually settled or dismissed nicely earlier than then.
“Actual property tends to convey out feelings in individuals,” Sadat mentioned. “You’ve gotten a high-profile actual property developer. You’ve gotten a high-profile actual property agent. You’ve gotten a sports activities agent over at CAA. You’re speaking about huge egos right here. And when that occurs, and somebody feels slighted, oftentimes… litigation is the outcome.”
