In the Alex Rodriguez saga, the score remains … three pending lawsuits.
Manhattan federal Judges Lorna Schofield and Edgardo Ramos ruled on Friday Team A-Rod needn’t consolidate two of its lawsuits, both featuring Major League Baseball as a defendant, into one. That’s what MLB and the Players Association, named in one of those two lawsuits, hoped to achieve in a filing earlier this week.
Rodriguez filed his first suit against MLB and commissioner Bud Selig on Oct. 4, accusing them of conducting a “witch hunt” to run him out of baseball. On Jan. 13, he sued MLB, Selig and the Players Association in an attempt to vacate the 162-game suspension he received from independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz for his involvement in Biogenesis, the shuttered South Florida anti-aging clinic.
MLB and the Players Association contended that the two lawsuits contained overlapping complaints and should be consolidated into one. Team A-Rod’s attorneys argued the suits dealt with “different factual circumstances and legal issues.”
Judge Schofield will hold a conference on Jan. 23 on the first lawsuit. The primary topic there figures to be MLB’s effort to have that suit thrown out of court.
Rodriguez has a third lawsuit, this one for medical malpractice against Yankees team physician Christopher Ahmad and New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.