Alex Rodriguez might want to wear the jersey of boyhood hero Dan Marino for the Hail Mary he’s about to launch.
According to legal experts, the Yankees third baseman’s chances of getting the 162-game suspension he received Saturday for his involvement with Biogenesis overturned in federal court are minuscule — but getting an injunction that would allow him to take the field while the case is ongoing is a slightly different matter.
Independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz’s ruling bars Rodriguez from playing the entire 2014 season, including the postseason. Rodriguez issued a statement saying he intends to take the case before a federal judge.
“It’s a very high standard that Alex Rodriguez and his attorneys would have to overcome in order for a federal court to overturn the order and opinion of an arbitrator,” said Darren Heitner, a sports and entertainment attorney based in Miami.
Experts agreed even an injunction could be hard to get unless a judge believes there is a reasonable chance of the case being overturned. But it’s not impossible.
“The path forward is narrow and it’s a long shot,” said Robert Boland, the academic chair of the Tisch Center for Sports Management at NYU. “But he could argue that the duration of the penalty exceeds what was put in the collective bargaining agreement.
“They could say anything above the limit in the CBA nullifies the suspension because it means Horowitz’s was ruling not just on the drug policy, but also on the discipline and that the arbitration was not applied correctly.”
Heitner said courts “appreciate” alternative dispute resolution — arbitration falls into that category — because it lessens their workload, and therefore likely are to uphold Horowitz’s decision.
“In the state of New York, that standard is what’s considered a manifest disregard of law,” Heitner said. “And it will be Alex Rodriguez’s burden to prove that the arbitrator made such a decision that goes beyond the bounds of using evidence of not being allowed in the court of law.”
So why would Rodriguez proceed?
“It’s more money going to [Rodriguez’s] attorneys, which I guess at the end of the day he can consider to be a tax write-off,” Heitner said. “And he can also justify it as some sort of indirect public relations budgeting because it will allow him to keep his name in the news. But other than that I really don’t see a victory for him at the end of the day.”
Rodriguez’s attorney, David Cornwell, most notably kept Ryan Braun from getting suspended in 2012, arguing the former MVP’s positive drug test was tainted.
“Cornwell has a long record of success in reducing penalties,” Boland said. “If they think they can knock it down by 40 games, it would be worth the money to Rodriguez. But it’s an uphill battle.”