MLB

Team A-Rod wants battle out of federal court

Throughout his epic battle with Major League Baseball, Alex Rodriguez has eyed his own union warily. Now, in court documents, A-Rod’s lawyers have characterized his ties with the Players Association as a potential hindrance to his cause — if the judge presiding over his case doesn’t see things Rodriguez’s way.

In paperwork filed Wednesday in federal court to move Rodriguez’s lawsuit against MLB back to Manhattan Supreme Court, Team A-Rod wrote keeping the case in federal court “would have the effect of granting less state law protection to employees governed by collective bargaining agreements than to other employees.”

Such a result, Team A-Rod continued, “turn[s] the policy that animated the [labor laws] on its head” by “penaliz[ing] workers who have chosen to join a union by preventing them from benefiting” from laws that protect other non-union employees.” These quotations come from a 1987 case, Baldracchi v. Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Div., in which the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled a fired employee could have her case heard in state court despite belonging to a union.

MLB attorneys, in a separate filing, contended A-Rod’s lawsuit should be thrown out altogether, since the matter of his complaint is governed by baseball’s collective bargaining agreement.

The next conference in this case is scheduled for Jan. 23, by which point independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz should have ruled on Rodriguez’s appeal of his 211-game suspension by MLB.

In other A-Rod legal action Wednesday, a Florida appeals court ruled MLB can take a deposition from Rodriguez’s notorious cousin Yuri Sucart as part of the league’s lawsuit against Biogenesis for helping players violate the Joint Drug Agreement.

Sucart became a well-known name in baseball circles in 2009 when A-Rod identified him (without naming him) as his accomplice in purchasing illegal performance-enhancing drugs from the Dominican Republic (where they are legal), transporting them back to the United States and using them from 2001 through 2003, while A-Rod played for the Rangers. The Third District Court of Appeal in Miami ruled 3-0 that Sucart must submit to the depositions in this suit, which was used to convince Biogenesis owner Anthony Bosch to become MLB’s star witness.

“I don’t agree with the ruling,” Jeffrey Sonn, Sucart’s attorney, said in a telephone interview. “We’re likely going to take this to the Florida Supreme Court for review. This is far from over.”